


No One Together

by pleasebekidding



Category: Supernatural, Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe, Crossover, M/M, Slash, Vampire Slayer(s), Vampires, Violence, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-16
Updated: 2012-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-29 15:31:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 38,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pleasebekidding/pseuds/pleasebekidding
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, Alaric Saltzman was impractical, optimistic, and prone to making bad decisions. And then a vampire killed his wife. John Winchester was a legendary vampire hunter, and Alaric was desperate to learn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Centuries of backward ways

**Author's Note:**

> Title and chapter title are from No One Together by Kansas. Incidentally, the "Best of Kansas" album makes a good soundtrack for this fic.  
> John Winchester never died. Pre-TVD AU that starts maybe s3 or 4 of Supernatural.  
> A million, squillion thank yous to the best beta in the history of time, Saltzatore. She made this amazing through betaing and cheerinading and fangirling and generally being an amazing friend!  
> She also did the amazing art, because she is just that cool.
> 
> Special request: If you enjoy this, please rec it. I think this is the first John/Ric fic!  
> If you know a livejournal comm or other place where I can post it please let me know!

 

 _Durham, NC_

Alaric Saltzman is a man possessed. Minutes from packing it all into the back of his truck and taking off. The secrets are all right here in this box, a maddening puzzle, but better, now, than it was; at least now he has somewhere to start.

It’s been three weeks since Isobel disappeared. Alaric can’t bring himself to admit what he thinks he knows – she’s dead, buried in a shallow grave, probably, and if she’s ever found, the coroner will ask how it was possible for every scrap of her blood to have been drained. Three and a half quarts, all gone, though some of it stains the carpet in Alaric’s small apartment.

But Alaric knows. The monster, the – he can barely think the word, isn’t ready to say it yet – the _vampire_ drank her, killed her, and denied Alaric even the opportunity to bury her, say goodbye properly.

The memory of this is the last thing Alaric sees before he goes to sleep at night. The vampire holding his wife up, drinking from her neck, rolling his head back in ecstasy, before tasting her again. The expression on his face, damn near sexual.

It was chilling.

Alaric had never taken it seriously, his wife’s obsession with vampires. Because she was, obviously, crazy. Or perhaps taking a metaphor a shade or five too far. Or maybe she was deeply involved in some nation-wide alternate reality game. Something. _Anything_ was more plausible than what Isobel had been trying to tell him all along – vampires were real.

The worst part is that now, Alaric can so clearly see the pattern – Isobel would disappear for a couple of days at a time, leave him a note to say she was on a research trip. When she got back, she’d look a little drained, for a couple of days, but she always came right again. Now Alaric wonders how she’d been paying for the information she’d been collecting, about vampires, about a specific line of them, the ones she’d come close to touching, growing up close to Mystic Falls, Virginia. Thinking about it makes him sick, monsters with their hands – with their mouths – on his beautiful wife. He wonders what else they touched her with.

(It should be said, Alaric’s drinking enough beer right now, on a daily basis, to keep a ship afloat, and this might also be contributing to the low level of nausea he seems to ride constantly – at the very least, it’s not helping.)

The last time he let himself wonder about this for a moment too long, he put his fist through the window in his bedroom. Twenty-two stitches (and a rather humiliating discussion with a psychiatrist in the emergency room) later, he decided not let himself wonder any more.

Three weeks of talking to cops, three weeks of talking to concerned family (his own, since Isobel had almost no one, thank God), three weeks sitting in front of Isobel’s laptop computer and wondering what her password might be, three weeks of ignoring the box of papers the University had delivered to him.

Talking to cops: Hard. Hard lying, because Alaric was at heart a simple man who preferred to tell the truth in all things; still, “Officer, a vampire killed my wife. I saw it happen” was likely to get him arrested, or committed.

Talking to family: Harder. “Darling, come home, for a little while. Please.” his mother begged. Like he was twenty-two and riding his first broken heart. “Perhaps she’s run off with another man, son; she might not be dead at all. That would be something, wouldn’t it?” his father added helpfully.

(Alaric had no words for this.)

Trying to break into the laptop: Impossible. Alaric, a romantic at heart, had tried dozens of variations on the theme of his own name, his birthday, their anniversary, the pet names he and Isobel had shared. So drunk he couldn’t stand, one night, he shouted at the computer, called it every name he wanted to call his wife and now couldn’t, a flood of bile and anger. Although it made him feel a little better, as a technique for password retrieval, it left something to be desired.

That night – the night of screaming rage – had been the first night Alaric had allowed himself to grieve; had allowed himself to slide bonelessly from Isobel’s desk chair and onto the floor, to sob like a five year old girl until he fell asleep, curled up like a cat on the rug.

Ignoring the box of documents: Ill advised.

When at last, this afternoon, Alaric had opened the box, he found things he hadn’t been expecting. Things that could have saved him some time.

On the top, an envelope, heavy, expensive paper, and his name written in an elegant, flowing script he didn’t recognise. Inside was a note, on matching paper.

 _Alaric,_

 _I am so sorry about Isobel. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do. Isobel is my mentor and my friend, and I want to help, if I can._

 _Obviously, Isobel’s work is staying here, for now, until she’s found._

(Alaric reads between the lines: found dead, or alive. Either way.)

 _These are personal things, from a drawer under her desk, from that leather satchel she’s been carrying around for the last few months, and from the cigar box she keeps hidden in the back of the bookshelf._

(Satchel? Cigar box?)

 _I’m sorry we never met; I hope we do, some day, and under happy circumstances._

 _If you want to talk, you can get me through Isobel’s office._

 _Vanessa Monroe_

The box is a veritable treasure trove. This is Isobel’s real research. A diary, of sorts, although it reads like Alaric’s old lab notebook from high school, really just a list of events, progress she’d made. Most usefully: Names. Phone numbers. Addresses. Dates. A lot have been crossed off at some stage, but others will be worth exploring.

Alaric’s heart races.

There’s some strange jewellery, a cameo that looks like a genuine antique, a pendant with a dark blue stone that is so ugly it has to either be new costume jewellery or something unaccountably old. Comparing it to the ring Alaric is wearing (hideous thing that Isobel had given him and made him swear he’d always wear), he thinks he detects a similar hand in its design, though it is less cumbersome. Alaric prefers the black stone on his ring.

(Twice he’s thought about throwing the ring out of the window of his car, but he knows he’ll wear it until the day he dies. Which, considering the way he’s been living, and what he’s planning, will probably be pretty soon.)

In a yellow envelope, a photocopy of an old tintype photograph, a beautiful young woman with thick, dark, wavy hair, dark eyes, and a cold, haughty expression. On the back of the photo, no date, no name, just the initials KP. He regards the photo a long time. Obviously, not a photo of a vampire, because you can’t take a photo of a vampire. Right?

The young woman reminds him a little of Isobel.

And _can_ you take a photo of a vampire? Do they run screaming from crucifixes? Are they repelled by garlic, and do they have reflections? Alaric realises he knows nothing about vampires save what he’s seen in films and read in books, and somehow, he doubts modern-day vampires are big into cloaks.

Alaric has to get into that computer.

He’s pored over the contents of the box for an entire afternoon, has failed to notice he’s actually sobered up. Hours ago. His heart’s racing, his mind is sharp and he’s excited in a way he hasn’t been since he first read Harper’s _The day Lincoln was shot_.

He’s laid out all the items; notes, photographs, the diary, a pretty purple herb that smells faintly like his grandmother’s house, another that has a bitter odour. The jewellery. Even Vanessa’s note. Decides the diary is the best place to start, the names, the dates.

Flips through the diary again, and that’s when the photograph falls out from a makeshift envelope created by gluing the edges of the back page to the back cover.

The photograph is of a familiar man, who looks younger than Alaric; probably twenty-five. Pale skin, black hair, and unless it’s a trick of the light, the palest silver eyes Alaric has ever seen. Fine features, even scowling as he is. He has his arms crossed over his body, perhaps paying close attention to what someone not pictured is saying to him, and the muscles in his arms are taut.

He has the look of a predator.

Alaric finds himself sitting for an unaccountably long time, looking at the photograph. Looking at it from bare inches away. From arm’s length.

Vampires do, indeed, show up in photographs.

More startling is the photo was taken outdoors, on a sunny day. Alaric really has a lot to learn, thought vampires went up in flames in the sunlight.

Almost as if it’s an afterthought, Alaric flips the photo over.

 _Damon Salvatore, Mystic Falls, Virginia, 199(8?)_.

He says it out loud. “Damon Salvatore.”

The man – the _monster_ – who killed his wife.

Idly, Alaric reaches for the laptop. Turns it on, and when prompted for a password, he types ‘Salvatore’. The laptop comes to life, ready to spill its secrets, and Alaric dies a little death.

**

The laptop is the Wikipedia of vampires and vampire lore. Everything from old folk tales, originating from Romania, Bulgaria, other parts of Eastern Europe, but also England, Wales. Scandinavia. Parts of Asia, where the stories seem quite different; to modern day accounts, scanned police reports, stories posted on websites and interview transcripts annotated in Isobel’s familiar shorthand. It seemed that Isobel had clearly delineated, in her own mind, at least, what she thought was legend or wishful thinking and what was real.

 _Damon Salvatore_.

Alaric finds a file about him, but doesn’t read it, not yet. He doesn’t want to know enough to go looking for the bastard until he knows exactly how to go about killing him.

Alaric has started to notice something curious – curious, and irritating. There are files missing, significant numbers of them. As if someone has gone through and deleted a lot. Folders within folders with no documents inside. All the legends and lore, that’s all there, but information about Mystic Falls, unexplained surnames, it’s all missing. Alaric rubs his hands over his tired eyes.

There is a knock on the door.

Alaric looks up, alarmed. Who would come here? Now? Frantically searches through his admittedly patchy memory, trying to remember if he’s invited someone. Remembers, at least, that he’s grumpy and antisocial and doesn’t invite people to infringe on his personal space, as a rule.

Wishes he had a peephole on the door, and calls out. “Who’s there?”

“Ben. Open up.”

Alaric sighs. Sweeps the contents back into the box they came from, dropping it into the bedroom, and pushes closed the laptop. Opens the door, leaning against the frame. “Not a good time, man.”

“Better than the last few times I’ve seen you, Saltzman. You appear to be sober. Although…” Ben looks around the room, unimpressed by the number of bottles that have been collecting. “Can I come in?”

“No,” Alaric says.

Ben pushes through anyway. He looks a bit off balance, smoothes down his sandy hair as he pushes his way into the apartment. He’s a good three inches taller than Alaric, and his grey eyes always look a little haunted. Kicked-puppy eyes. They got him laid a lot in college, not that he needed the help. “Tough titties, Saltzman,” he says, dropping wallet and phone on the tiny kitchen bench. “I brought Korean food. Consider it a very thinly veiled bribe. Everyone’s worried about you and I drew the short straw. So we need to talk. When was the last time you ate?”

Alaric glowers. “I eat.”

Ben opens the fridge. “Yeah. Water, yeast, malt and hops. And apparently condiments, although you’re running low on those, too.” He passes Alaric a couple of beers, shuts the fridge with a disgusted sigh, and scrabbles through the kitchen drawers for cutlery.

They eat directly from the cartons, once Ben has established that Alaric has, at some stage,  methodically broken all his plates. Alaric feigns indifference but he’s disturbed by the fact he doesn’t remember having done this. Crouched over the japchae, bibimbap and kimchi, Ben starts gently probing.

“So, Saltzman, what have you been doing? Other than systematically torturing your liver?”

Alaric pokes listlessly at his noodles. “Going through Isobel’s stuff. You know. Looking for clues.”

Ben is watching him, cautious, and when he speaks again, it’s softer. “There was a lot of blood, Saltzman. That’s the main clue. You need to start dealing with this.”

Alaric shakes his head. “I won’t believe she’s dead until they show me a body.” He pretends to enjoy the food, which, despite being appallingly salty, has very little flavour. Alaric’s a fan of Korean food, generally, but this is pretty ordinary.

Alaric chooses his words carefully. “I need to get away for a bit, Ben. I’m gonna go looking for some old friends of Isobel’s, see if anyone has any idea what could have happened.”

Ben nods cautiously. “Right.” He’s waiting for a better explanation. Alaric sighs.

“I think I’ll leave soon. Tomorrow, or the next day.” There is another long silence, and Alaric feels the scrutiny.

Ben puts down his cutlery. “How long have we known each other, Ric?”

Uh-oh. People ask that when they want to point out they know you really well, and if you have a suicidally Bad Plan up your sleeve, people who know you well are often the ones who will do everything they can to send you off-course. Also: Ben never calls him Ric.

“Long time, Ben. Your point?” He chews methodically, avoiding his friend’s eyes.

“First time you got your heart broken, you spent six months drinking yourself into an early grave and fucking everything that made eyes at you. You wrapped your car around a tree. Is this ringing bells?”

Alaric nods. “Still waiting for your point.”

“I’m lookin’ at you, Saltzman, and I think you’re on a collision course. Again.”

Alaric narrows his eyes, crosses his arms, glares at Ben. “Isobel didn’t dump me for her academic advisor. She was my wife. She’s missing and probably dead.”

“And yet,” Ben answered, with a dry tone that only someone who’s known Alaric his whole adult life could actually get away with.

Alaric composes himself. “I know you’re all worried. I’ve been drinking too much. I know. Sittin’ in this house… it’s like livin’ with a ghost, man.” Wipes at the condensation on his beer bottle. Closes his eyes, but opens them again when the image on the back of his eyelids is not Isobel’s face, sleep-addled and lovely, but Damon Salvatore’s sharp features. He wonders what the fangs look like. Wonders how much it hurt her, being chewed on, blood draining from her body. Looks at the small rug on the ground which covers the blood stain, and once again, feels the sickening sense of being on his way down a rabbit hole.

He’s been silent too long. Ben is studying him, still suspicious. Probably more suspicious. He can probably hear Alaric’s mind turning over.

“Right,” Ben says at last. “Right.”

“Also, I’m not twenty-two anymore. ‘m not gonna wrap my car around a tree.” He tries to return an even gaze, but fails.

Ben has a slightly mournful look about him, but then, he often does. “We all loved Isobel, Saltzman. We’ve all lost her.”

“Kind of you to say.” Why are people such idiots? Who thinks this shit helps?

“We don’t want to lose you too.”

Alaric sighs, elbows on the counter. Face in his hands. “I don’t want to lose me, either.”

Ben sighs. “You gonna go and talk to the Dean?” His eyes are on Alaric’s injured hand. It’s almost healed now, and the stitches are long gone, but it still looks nasty, and tells a story. It was Ben who drove Alaric to the hospital, the day it happened.

Alaric shrugs, ignoring the gaze. “Thought I’d just send an email. They can fire me, if they feel like they have to. I don’t know how long I’m gonna be.”

Ben wants to demand answers. Wants an itinerary, an estimated date of return, wants to go with him. Wants to beg him to stay, to clean up his act, to get on with the rest of his life.

Doesn’t.

Nods, instead, and “will you at least stay in touch?”

“Yeah, course,” Alaric lies.

They talk a while longer, drink another beer or two, and Alaric tries to pay attention to Ben’s complaints about the bitchy program administrator, a woman famous for having such a fetish for bureaucracy that she had the head of department’s credit card cancelled on him – while he was overseas at a conference – because he’d failed to turn in a receipt.

At the door, Alaric leans against the wall, hands in his pockets.

“You gonna be alright, Saltzman?” Ben asks, and Alaric doesn’t know how to answer, so he shoots for normal; trademark easy grin. Hopes it doesn’t look too strained.

“Course I will.”

Ben eyes him long moments, finally cupping Alaric’s jaw in his hands, and lands a soft kiss on his mouth, following it up with just a little more pressure; a reminder, _you had a life before Isobel. When you come back, you’ll have a life again_.

Alaric kisses him back, but only for a moment. Just an affirmation, not an invitation. “I’ll see you when I get back,” he says, gently removing Ben’s hand from his face. “It’s gonna be alright, Ben.”

Ben casts one last worried look at the piles of beer bottles around the kitchen and the couch, nods once, and pulls the door shut with a soft click behind him.

**

It takes a day for Alaric to get the empty bottles and the rest of the rubbish out of the apartment and clean it, pay up a couple of months’ rent, and pack the things he thinks he’ll need, as he sets out to find the first name, and the first address, on his list:

Daniel Elkins. Manning, Colorado.


	2. Who can count the good men gone away

_Durham, NC – Manning, CO – Sioux Falls, SD_

It’s over seventeen hundred miles from Durham to Manning. Alaric doesn’t much like driving by himself and he feels himself tiring every few hours. The first overnight stop he makes is in Huntington, West Virginia, and he’s disappointed to realise he’s covered barely three hundred and fifty miles. Finds himself in a tavern a couple of blocks away from his motel, perusing the dinner menu.

“Porterhouse,” he tells the waitress. “Mushroom sauce. And a pitcher of whatever’s cheap.”

“How d’you want the steak done?”

“Rare. And mash, not chips.”

The blood that wells up in the meat when he cuts into it makes Alaric want to break something, scream, tear his lungs out of his own chest, but he’s starving, so he eats it, vowing all the while to order his meat well done from now on.

The motel room Alaric’s sleeping in tonight has only one thing to recommend it: It’s cheap. It smells faintly of mould, and less faintly of industrial bleach, and Alaric vows to sleep on top of the bed covers and wear flip flops in the shower (and no, he doesn’t own flip flops, but if he’s gonna be choosing his motels on the basis of price alone, he figures he’d better shell out for a pair, and soon).

Alaric pores over the diary, tries the number he’s found next to the entry about Daniel Elkins, badass vampire slayer who’s been at it since the sixties. Alaric figures he must be old, by now, but that’s fine – Alaric wants to talk, just wants to learn, maybe get a pointer on whom to find next. Seems the number’s been disconnected. Alaric figures that (are they slayers? What do they call themselves? Has Buffy made it an offensive term?) these guys are probably paranoid enough to change phone numbers pretty regularly.

The mini bar is overpriced. Tequila is nine bucks for a tiny bottle. The bourbon’s only six, but Alaric has never really drunk the stuff.

Alaric sighs, plots out the following day’s drive. When he settles onto the bed to sleep, he finds himself unaccountably reaching for the photograph.

Damon Salvatore.

He studies the vampire’s aquiline features for long minutes, props it against the lamp on the nightstand, and rolls over to sleep.

A night in St Louis, one in Salina, Kansas, and another in Denver, and Alaric can hardly see, he’s so tired. For a fleeting moment, he wishes he had brought someone with him, just to share the driving, maybe share a laugh.

Of course, if anyone had come with him, they’d be on him constantly, begging him to turn around and go home. Ben kept calling, leaving messages Alaric couldn’t bring himself to listen to. He sent text messages Alaric deleted without reading.

The night he spends on the outskirts of Denver is a bad night. Alaric drinks three pitchers of beer in the motel bar, buys a bottle of tequila to take back to his room, and drinks almost the entire thing. He sits on the couch, trying not to wonder about insect infestations in the cushions. Lets his eyes drift shut, and hears a familiar voice.

“Hey.”

Isobel is sitting on the bed.

“Hey, you,” Alaric slurs, unable to keep his eyes open all the way. “Where you been? Everyone’s looking for you.”

“I’m dead, Ric. You know it. They know it.” And yes, it’s true, her skin is paler than it ought to be. “You shouldn’t be doing this, sweet man. You’ll get hurt.”

“Gonna.” He shakes his head, trying to clear the fog of tequila and beer. “Gonna find the sonofabitch who killed you. Gonna kill him.”

Isobel crosses the room, straddles Alaric’s lap. “You can’t. He’ll kill you. Don’t waste your life on this, babe. Go home. Build yourself a new life, Ric. Forget me.” She lowers her mouth to his, licks into it like a cat, rubbing herself against his erection. “Go home.”

When Alaric wakes up, in the morning, he finds his dick out of his pants, and one hand sticky with last night’s come. Alone, ashamed, and miserable, he showers, the water hotter than he can even tolerate, as he washes the night’s sin from his pores.

**

Manning, Colorado, is a bust, or so it seems initially. Certainly, Daniel Elkins isn’t there.

Alaric knows he’s found the right house, knows it for a couple of different reasons.

First, there are weird runes, symbols, drawn all over the place; on the front door, on the corners of the window frames, inside and out. On the freaking letterbox. On the fridge door, but the house has been unoccupied for some time, so Alaric’s not going to open the fridge and find out whether it has protected the fridge from being invaded by….

Well, fuck. By anything. Whatever. He’s not gonna open that fridge door.

Second, there are books about vampires on the shelves. Not a lot of them. It looks a bit like someone’s gone through and taken all the real vampire books, leaving a whole lot of bad horror novels. In the false bottom of a drawer, he also finds sketches of vampire faces, a diagram of their teeth.

It makes him want to put his fist through another window.

Alaric goes through the entire house. Drawers and cupboards and wardrobes and hideyholes under floorboards and inside false drawer bottoms, praying there’s nothing important in the fridge. Everything is filthy, plant matter grows through the cracks, and vermin have chewed through everything they can get their teeth into.

At one stage, he becomes certain there is someone in the house. Wishes he had a weapon, but in typical Saltzman fashion, he’s been accumulating information, not anything with practical application. Opening a wardrobe in a downstairs bedroom, he finds a family of possums, and screams in a way he hopes no one will ever hear him scream; though to be fair, the possums scream pretty hilariously too, so Alaric figures if they dob him in to the Man Police, he’ll dob them in right back.

Exhausted and dejected and with nothing to show for seventeen hundred miles of driving but a couple of very unpleasant sketches, Alaric sits at a bench in the kitchen.

It was probably a nice house, once. Alaric wonders if Elkins is dead, or has just moved on. He suspects the former.

Out in the garden, there’s a vegetable patch. Alaric crosses to the window, shivering slightly in the cold, and takes it all in. Looks like corn, sweet peas, maybe tomatoes. A lot of herbs. It’s all been growing into an increasing tangle, over at least a couple of years.

Alaric squints.

Up the back, close to a fence, is a familiar, bright purple flower.

“Vervain,” he breathes, to the empty room. He’s been doing this a lot, the last few days, speaking out loud, and it saddens him each time to hear that his voice comes out scratchy and underused.

The back door won’t budge, so Alaric goes through the front door and around to the side, pushing aside fallen branches, ignoring a dead gopher, a rotting mattress and something that strongly resembles a coffin lid.

At the back of the vegetable patch. He’s right. Vervain. Not sure why this matters, but since Alaric learned from Isobel’s research that the herb is toxic to vampires, and that it protects the wearer from compulsion, he’s been carrying some around with him. So first of all, he takes the rest of the plant, chops it off at the ground. It’ll come in handy.

Second, following an impulse he can’t explain, he decides to dig below it.

In the shed, Alaric finds a disturbing number of shovels, some with stains he doesn’t want to think too much about. He chooses one and starts to dig.

Nothing. Three feet and nothing, and really, this is ridiculous.

“What are you expecting to find, asshole?” he asks himself, grumbling, nearly ready to give up, when the shovel hits something solid.

Almost an hour later, Alaric brings a metal foot locker up and out of the deep hole. It’s not locked; Elkins probably figured anyone who got this far really needed whatever was inside. A smaller box. Inside: a notebook, some photographs, and a key. Alaric pockets the key, resolving to see if he can find anything inside he hasn’t unlocked. The photographs mean little, but he’ll keep them. Flicking through the notebook reveals names, dates, phone numbers. Alaric smiles to himself. Progress.

**

After a brief debate with himself, which he gladly loses, Alaric elects not to stay in the ramshackle house. Finds a motel in a town a hundred miles west, and sits down to analyse the contents of the notebook, phone on hand.

Harvelle’s Roadhouse is somewhere in central Nebraska, and Alaric can’t imagine why a man who’s lived his whole life in Manning, Colorado would have noted the place in a book if it wasn’t significant. Alaric dials the number, gets a message, a woman’s voice, in a low, rich timbre, heavy with regret and hard-won years.

“You’ve reached Ellen at the smouldering ruins of the Roadhouse. That’s right, folks, Harvelle’s is no more. If you need to get a message to me or Jo, sing real loud. Maybe we’ll hear you. If you need to get a message to Ash, you’re gonna need more than a song. Don’t bother speaking after the tone.”

Alaric doesn’t, but he does dial the number again. _Sing real loud_. There’s something odd about the way she says it, emphasising the word ‘sing’.

Alaric flicks through the notebook again, skimming the scraps of paper that have been glued, taped or stapled in. Notices a business card, the type you get printed up twenty at a time in malls and airports.

(Ben used to have a great scam where he’d print up business cards that variously proclaimed him an architect, or a veterinarian, or a music producer. He’d keep a few different ones on him, and hand over the one he thought gave him the best chance of getting the target of the night’s affections into his bed. Once, apparently emboldened by Alaric’s recent breakup from a pretty theatre major, he’d given him one.

 _Ben Alder, Love of your life_.

Alaric had shaken his head. “I’m sorry, Ben. You’re my best friend, man, I just…”

Ben had tucked the card into Alaric’s back pocket, the kicked-puppy look in full force. “Keep it, Saltzman,” he’d said. “Might come in handy one day.” He’d caught Alaric’s chin on his finger, and walked away.

The memory makes Alaric unimaginably sad, as does the memory of Ben playing the role of Best Man so admirably at Alaric’s wedding to Isobel. He sets both memories aside.)

This card reads “Singer Auto Salvage.” An address outside of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

 _Sing real loud_.

Alaric dials the number on the card. Another recorded message. “Singer Auto Salvage. If your car isn’t a one of them fruity foreign ones, chances are I got a junker of it somewhere here. Drop by.”

The voice is gravelled with years of alcohol abuse, and though the accent is entirely different from Alaric’s, it still gives him an odd sense of premonition. He checks the back of the card, and sure enough, there’s another number, hand written.

This time, he gets an answer, almost before he hears a ring.

“This is Bobby Singer’s direct hotline. You shouldn’t have this number.”

Alaric’s caught off guard. “Uh, hi. Is this Bobby Singer?”

“Where’d you get this number?”

Alaric pauses. “Daniel Elkins.”

Bobby hangs up. Alaric pours himself a large glass of tequila, dials again. Bobby forgoes the charming greeting. “Liar. Elkins is dead. Where’d you get this number?”

Alaric racks his brain. “Ellen Harvelle.”

“Boy, you got shit for brains? Ellen knows better than to give this number out. Who is this?”

This time, Alaric hangs up first, and plots a course for South Dakota.

**

The first day, Alaric covers less than three hundred miles, and he’s still completely wiped out. Stops in Rushville, taking a slightly better hotel than he usually would, needing a good night’s sleep.

During the day, he’d stopped twice to nap at the side of the road.

Isobel, in the seat beside him, ran fingers over the dips and planes of his face, waking him.

“Beautiful boy,” she said, a sad, fond expression on her face. “My Alaric. What are you doing? Go home. You have people who love you. Let me go.” Wistful, the Isobel Alaric married, not the woman he lost at the end, distracted and sad.

He shook his head. “I gotta do this, Isobel.”

“You’ll get hurt.”

“You already got hurt, Is. I can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”

She disappeared before Alaric could wake up and his conscious mind could banish her.

**

Before he chooses his hotel, he finds a store, buys himself a notebook. Wants his own notes, not everyone else’s. It’s a large format book with a soft leather cover, and he scribbles, tapes and glues all the bits and pieces he’s collected into its pages before going to sleep.

He’s caught up on the Winchesters and the Campbells.

Partly, it’s their story, for sure. John Winchester lost his wife, Mary, to something – a demon – the night his youngest son was still a baby. The older son had to be about Alaric’s age, and since then, John had been running around the country killing things that needed killing. Vampires included.

Mary was a hunter herself, her family legendary in certain circles, although there’s nothing to suggest she was still hunting when she was killed. Perhaps her death was revenge.

Alaric has cross-referenced the notes about the Winchesters in Elkins’ notes with what he’s found in Isobel’s papers, and by now, Alaric thinks he probably knows more about the family than they do.

Alaric’s hand is cramping by the time he’s consolidated all the notes, and he shakes it out.

He’s about to glue the photo of Damon Salvatore into the back cover when some instinct stops him. After a long moment staring at the photo Alaric props it up against the bedside lamp once more, and sleeps under the vampire’s indifferent gaze.

Alaric sleeps for ten straight hours. Showers, eats a breakfast of bacon, eggs and hash, drinks six cups of coffee, and hits the road.

Almost four hundred miles. Three stops to nap and dream of his dead wife. One fantastic burger, though the meat was a little ambiguous, and Alaric stops at a liquor store in Sioux Falls to stock up on bribes before arriving at Singer’s Auto Salvage a little after eight that night.

He knocks on the door, and after a long wait, a curmudgeonly giant, aged somewhere between fifty and seventy, and wearing a Spam baseball cap, pulls the door open. “Shop’s closed, boy. Come back tomorrow.”

Alaric hates having doors shut in his face. Hates it a lot, and also, he’s half frozen to death. He knocks again. The door opens.

“Are you Bobby Singer?”

Bobby squints, looks Alaric up and down. “Depends who’s askin’.”

Alaric puts his hand out. “Alaric Saltzman. I’m -”

“Not interested, boy.” And Bobby shuts the door again.

Alaric learned the value of persistence chasing down the very reluctant Isobel Flemming for a first date. He’d won her over with a bottle of New Zealand Semillon. He was planning a similar tack with Bobby Singer, though he was skipping the serenade and flowers this time. “I need some help with something. See, I have this bottle of Scotch. I don’t know if it’s any good or not. Can you -”

The door opens again, and Bobby snatches the bottle. “Well played, kid,” he says, unscrewing the top and taking a good sniff.

“You call here the other night?” Bobby asks, leading him into the house and Alaric debates lying.

He suspects Bobby knows how to pick a liar from thirty feet. So, “yes, sir. Need some help with something.”

Bobby rounds on him. “Stand over there.”

Alaric tenses. “On that rug?” Takes a tentative step, but Bobby’s face is determined. Alaric stands in the middle of a small rag rug.

Bobby nods. “Now come here.” Alaric obeys. Bobby nods again, like getting free of the rug means Alaric has passed a test. “Want a glass of water?”

Alaric has that sense, again, that he’s fallen down a rabbit hole. “Uh, I’m good. Thanks. I -”

“Wasn’t offerin’, boy. Drink the water.”

Alaric takes the offered glass. Salutes, and drinks it down. Bobby looks satisfied. Another test. “Now. What are you doin’ here?”

“You gonna tell me what that was about?” His eyes drift to the ceiling above the rug. There’s a symbol of some kind drawn up there. Alaric frowns.

“No. What are you doin’ here? Where’d you get my number?”

Alaric accepts a glass of something alcoholic and very likely toxic, and which tastes a little like the bathtub it was made in, and Bobby pours himself a glass from the bottle Alaric brought with him. Alaric fights the temptation to roll his eyes, and sips at the bitter drink. “I wasn’t lying. I got it from Elkins. Found it at his house.”

“Boy, now I know you’re lyin’. We took everything from that house.”

“Not everything. I found a box buried in the back yard.”

Bobby seems to consider this, and decides it sounds at least plausible. “Paranoid old coot,” he mumbles under his breath. “So what are you doin’ here? Make me ask a fourth time and you’ll regret it,” he cautions.

“I’m looking for John Winchester,” Alaric says, mouth set in a stern line. “I need him to teach me how to kill vampires.”

**

After laughing so hard, and for so long, that Alaric worries Bobby could have some sort of a seizure, Bobby offers him the advice to ‘fuck off home’, and an assurance that right now, neither Alaric Saltzman nor God himself could find John Winchester.

Still, Alaric persists, tells him the whole story. Bobby offers him a couch for the night, and in the morning, feeds him grits and dark, strong coffee. Tells him once more to go home, and suggests if he doesn’t have the brains to follow good advice when it’s offered to him, to try for John’s sons instead.

In the morning, Alaric remembers the key. He digs through his knapsack until he finds it.

“Bobby, look. I found this is the box as well. Doesn’t fit anything in the house. You know what it is?” He drops the key into Bobby’s hand. Notices a slight tremor as Bobby draws it close to his face.

“It’s the spare key for a pistol case. Case got busted open the night Elkins died.” He stares at it, lost in a memory, and finally looks up at Alaric again. “I’ll keep it, if you don’t mind,” he says, though it doesn’t sound like a request.

Alaric nods. “Yeah. Look, thanks Bobby.” Hits the road before lunch, pointed in the vague direction of Minneapolis.


	3. A one way trip to nowhere all along

_Minneapolis, MN_

Sam and Dean Winchester stalk through the streets of Minneapolis. Sam’s sporting a limp, did something to his knee discouraging some minor demon from chowing down on the tiny residents of the neonatal intensive care unit at the Children’s Hospital. Dean’s sporting bruises and a deep scratch over one eye. Sam actually finds the scratch sort of… appealing. He’s been fighting the urge to beg Dean to let him stitch it.

A stitch would be totally unnecessary, but Sam has a… kink. Mostly for the stitching part. “Here,” he tells Dean, indicating heavy doors, appealingly illuminated with a small sign. “S’posed to be good food.”

Dean rolls his eyes, runs a hand through his hair. “Gay bar? Seriously, Sam, gay bar?”

Sam hunches his shoulders, shrugs, hands up in supplication. “I can’t count your hang-ups on both hands, anymore, Dean. I just wanna have a few drinks somewhere I can kiss you without some soccer mom giving me the hairy eyeball. Is that okay?”

Dean glares, eyes narrowed, and then quirks a lip. “Sick little puppy, Sam.”

“Shut up, Dean. C’mon.” Sam pulls at his brother’s jacket sleeve. “It won’t kill you.”

Pushing through the door, eyeing the dress code sign dubiously, Dean resumes complaining. “These places are all full of fruity little micro-brews and wine I can’t spell.”

Inside, the bar is nice; smells less like stale piss than most of them do. It’s all dark wood panels and half-decent photography in nice frames on the walls, along with posters advertising ‘fruity little microbrews’ and Chilean pinot grigio. Sam raises his eyebrows in surprise. Wonders for the millionth time why they don’t get off the road for a few months. It’d be nice to have a watering hole like this, instead of a string of dirty roadside diners.

“I’m sure we can get you a PBR.”

“PBR’s a dyke beer.” Dean grumbles, reading over the list. “How many times I gotta tell you that, baby brother?”

“I hate it when you call me that, Dean,” Sam says, irritated, reading the dinner menu.

Dean gives him a lascivious look. “You love it when I call you that.”

“Not in public. Shut up, Dean. What do you wanna eat?”

Dean knits his eyebrows together. “You know it’s no fun when you lob me low ones every time, right?”

Sam grunts, irritated. Dean can’t even order dinner without everything he says dripping with innuendo, especially not after a hunt. After a moment absorbing the beer menu, Dean elbows Sam in the ribs. “Sam.”

Sam can’t decide between a half-pound sirloin and a warm chicken salad. Sits at a bar stool, re-reading the descriptions like it actually matters. Dean’s still poking at his side, a delighted grin washing his features.

“Seriously, Sammy. Check this out. Sasquatch. They have Sasquatch beer. Look. Sammy. Sammy.” Dean elbows him again and Sam has to fight to conceal a smile. “Sasquatch beer. Sasquatch Scotch Ale.” Dean attracts the bartender’s attention.

“I would like a Sasquatch, good man,” says Dean, nose in the air and altogether too pleased with himself.

The bartender gives Sam a look. Sam nods, raises two fingers.

“A sasquatch drinking a Sasquatch.” Dean raises his glass, when the bartender brings the drinks.

Sam shakes his head. “It’s not that funny, Dean. Let it go,” but Dean’s still chuckling under his breath. Sam could swear he hears the word ‘sasquatch’ at least a couple more times.

They eat their steaks in silence, Sam distracted by the gash over Dean’s eye. Trying not to imagine needle and thread. “Why you starin’ at me, sasquatch?” Dean asks, wicked smile on his face.

Sam doesn’t answer. “Pool?” he asks, and without waiting for Dean to nod, he crosses the room to place a quarter on the corner of one of the tables. The guy currently lining up to break gives Sam an appreciative once over, sees Dean, shrugs his shoulders. _C’est la vie_.

Dean’s drawing obscene graffiti on his plate with the tomato sauce and mustard. Sam rolls his eyes. Again. Sometimes, Sam thinks the constant eye-rolling is eventually going to cause some kind of permanent damage to his optical nerve. He’s tried to break himself of the habit. But really, he and Dean are brothers, lovers, business partners, permanent road-trip buddies. Sam needs something, no matter how small, to feel like he’s got some degree of control over his life and since he can’t actually kill Dean rolling his eyes will just have to do.

For now.

They order another round of beers and Dean looks around the room. “Gay bar in Minneapolis on a Tuesday night. Quiet as the tomb,” he muses. Sam punches him lightly in the chest.

“Stop saying ‘gay bar’,” Sam insists, chalking the end of his cue, and when he looks up again Dean’s mouth is barely an inch from his own.

Dean leans in for a soft kiss, and Sam smiles into it. “Sorry, sasquatch,” Dean breathes. “I’ll be good.”

Sam grabs for a handful of his t-shirt, kisses him a little harder, earning some appreciative looks from the handful of patrons.

(He knows they look hot together. He’s sort of used to the looks, now, reminds himself for the thousandth time that no one knows they’re brothers.)

Dean growls a little, nipping at Sam’s bottom lip. “I’m breaking,” he announces, lining up the shot. Half an hour later they start their second game, and the bar’s slowly filling up, as Dean fetches more beers. Sam’s lining up a tricky shot, one only someone with freakishly long arms could hope to achieve, when he feels Dean run a thumb suggestively over the back of his thigh.

“Stop trying to distract me,” Sam says, batting the hand away.

He has the shot lined up again, when he feels Dean’s hand between his legs, too high for propriety anywhere but here. Tries to ignore it, tries to take the shot anyway. Fails. “Dean. I swear to God, Dean, I’ll stake you with this thing, and not through the heart.”

But Dean’s wearing an odd expression. “One of us is gettin’ cruised,” he says, mischievous. “Or maybe both of us.” Dean crooks his neck in the direction of the bar, where a good-looking guy, maybe thirty, is sneaking looks at them, drinking a beer from the bottle. “Whaddya say, baby brother? We pick ‘im up, go make memories?”

Sam feels a flash of irritation. “No. No more. Never again. Forget it. You always think it’s a good idea and then you always turn into a possessive little bitch,” he says, re-aligning the cue, taking the shot before Dean can stick his tongue in his ear or something. Eyes flicker back to the stranger at the bar, light brown hair and the sort of stubble that neither he nor Dean can get away with. 

The stranger looks away quickly. Someone puts a quarter on the corner of the pool table and Sam nods in acknowledgement. Dean’s still got half an eye on the stranger.

“Think he needs some discouragement,” he says, taking what should be his second to last shot but botching it badly. “Let’s give him a show.” Knowing they’re being watched, Dean grabs Sam’s belt, pulls him close. Sam blushes. Wishes he didn’t. Dean kisses him again, the sort of kiss that says he’s in for an interesting night once they stumble back to the motel. Sam feels his cock stir at the contact. “He reminds me of someone.”

Sam snorts. “Stubble, chinos, leather jacket? How about almost any hunter?”

This gives Dean pause. Sam wins the game, and they head back to the bar. “More Sasquatch? For my sasquatch?” Dean asks, grinning.

“It’s not getting any funnier, Dean,” Sam deadpans. “And no. Anything but Sasquatch.” The bar has filled up pretty efficiently, and Sam watches his brother scan the faces with interest. He doesn’t care. Dean acts a little slutty, sometimes, but he always leaves with Sam at the end of the night.

Dean crooks his chin at the bartender. “Lager. Anything. Two,” he says.

They stand at the bar, waiting for their beers, pointedly ignoring the stranger. Apparently, he’s decided he’s done being ignored. “I’ll pay for those,” he tells the bartender, when the beers arrive, and Dean gives him a lopsided grin.

“Thanks, sweet cheeks, but you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree,” he says, pointedly jabbing Sam in the ribs.

The stranger rolls his eyes in a near perfect imitation of Sam and says “Yeah, Dean, I noticed.”

Before Sam knows what’s happening, Dean’s manhandling the poor dude off his stool and into the men’s room around the corner from the bar.

Sam swears under his breath, chasing after them both. By the time he gets there, Dean has the guy up against the wall, Ruby’s knife pressed against his throat.

(At least this is a pretty clean bathroom, Sam thinks, pointlessly. Some of the dives they end up in, you wouldn’t want to throw a Rakshasa against the walls, they’re that gnarly.)

Sam puts an arm out to keep the door closed – they don’t need company for this – and they hear a toilet flush. The dude who comes out of the stall takes one look at the disturbing tableau, looks panicked, takes a step back. Slim as a girl, probably a whole foot shorter than Sam, soft curls at the nape of his neck.

“Everything okay?” he says, terrified, submissive smile on his face, and Sam has to remind himself that to most people, this is not a Tuesday night at work.

Dean flashes a smile, but doesn’t let up on the knife. “Peachy,” he says. “Side of keen. You?”

The man trembles a little, looks from Dean, to Sam, to the stranger with the knife to his throat, and Sam thinks maybe, just maybe, the stranger’s too calm. Proves it when, despite the pressure on his windpipe, he looks at the guy, still half in and half out of the stall, and deadpans: “Don’t judge, man.”

Sam lets the man leave, and resumes holding the door shut. They’re going to have to make this fast.

Dean, attention no longer divided, stands with his face about six inches from the stranger’s.

“You know this could kill you, right?”

The stranger gives him a withering look. “Well, it’s a fuck-off big knife. I would guess so.” His voice is strained, the oxygen in somewhat short supply, but he’s maintaining his cool.

“I mean, you’d be _dead_. No escaping back downstairs, coming back later for a different vessel.”

The stranger looks completely lost. Like someone trying to reason with a bear, he speaks slowly, maintains eye contact. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Dean. What’s a vessel?”

Sam searches his pockets for a vial of holy water, coming to his senses at last, and splatters the stranger, who blinks in annoyance, but does not sizzle, scream, or spew black smoke from his throat.

Dean backs off, returns the knife to its well-concealed hilt. “Who are you?” he asks, suspicious, and the stranger shoots him a withering look.

“Can we maybe do this out there? That little guy’s gonna call the police if he doesn’t see me walk out of here under my own steam. I’ll buy you that drink.” Says it drawing himself up to full height, still shorter than Sam or Dean, obviously, but there’s something sort of impressive about someone who can crack a dirty joke with a knife to his throat and still pay for a round of drinks. He rearranges his clothes, rubs at the thin line on his throat. Dean’s drawn a little blood. Not much, but Sam feels sort of guilty about it anyway.

When they push through the door, a huge, black security guard with a stark keloid scar down one cheek is rushing towards the men’s room, the nervous witness in tow.

“You alright, son?” the guard asks the stranger, and Sam’s sick of thinking of the man like this; what the three of them just shared was, well, not ‘intimate’, but it was something. He wants a handle on him.

The stranger cocks an eyebrow. “College buddies,” he says dryly. “We pledged together at USD. The pranks never end,” he claims, neither face nor stance betraying a thing. Looks at the distinctly relieved witness appreciatively. “But thanks for caring. We’ve got drinks waiting for us at the bar.” He nods once and leads the Winchesters to the bar, leaving the security guard and the witness looking confused.

Truth be told, Sam’s confused, too; Dean never lets himself be led anywhere. Sam figures the dude has him off-balance enough to be acting out of character.

Sam wants to sink into the floor. At least in the shitty dives they’re used to, no one so much as bats an eyelid if a knife gets pulled. Around the room, eyes follow them, expressions ranging from distinct curiosity to outright hostility. Certainly, a great deal of interest, but that’s got to be at least partly because they’re the three best looking guys in the whole place.

Minutes later, they’re settled into a booth, and the stranger wipes nervous palms on his jeans. So he has some sense. He’s been concealing some level of panic. Sam’s glad; the stranger reminds him of some hunters they’ve met, over the years. The type that end up dead way too fast. Dean eyes him with suspicion. “How’d you find us?”

“First things first. I’m Alaric. Alaric Saltzman.” He offers his hand to shake, and Dean actually shakes; Sam’s relieved. He shakes Sam’s hand, as well, but it’s Dean he’s most wary of. Defers to him like you might a pack leader. “And you’re Sam and Dean Winchester.”

This is something of a problem.

Sam and Dean don’t acknowledge their… unconventional relationship, even to each other, when they don’t absolutely have to; except when Dean calls him ‘baby brother,’ and no matter what Dean thinks, Sam hates even that. If this guy knows who they are, knows their names, then he has to know other hunters.

Sam has visions of the world falling down around his and Dean’s ears. He suspects Dean’s thinking the same, can almost hear the gears turn over in Dean’s mind. In fact, he knows Dean well enough to know he’s probably seriously considering burying Alaric Saltzman in a shallow grave somewhere.

Dean narrows his eyes but manages half a grin. “Alaric? Alaric? High school was pretty traumatic for you, right?”

“Call me Ric.”

“Yeah, that’ll happen.” Dean watches Alaric like a bug under a magnifying glass. “How’d you find us?”

Alaric looks exhausted. “Finding people, I’m good at, apparently,” he sighs. “Getting them to talk to me, not so much.” He grimaces, drinks deep.

“You a hunter?”

Alaric’s eyes flicker at the word. “Getting’ there. Tryin’ to be. Right now I’m a historian with… good intentions.” He wipes condensation from his glass with the blade of his hand. “I’m looking for your father.”

“Want me to save you some time?” Dean asks.

Alaric nods. “That would be great.”

“Give up now and go home. If dad doesn’t wanna be found, he won’t be. So you can wander around the country for a few weeks and then give up or you can give up now.”

Alaric holds Dean’s gaze. “Bobby said the same thing.”

Sam tenses; this is not going to plan at all. He speaks before Dean can. “Bobby’s a smart man, Ric.” Doesn’t ask the question that’s about to fall from his lips; how did he _find_ Bobby, let alone him and Dean?

And more importantly – what’s he going to say to Bobby about what he’s seen?

Alaric sighs. “You’re really not going to help?”

As Dean opens his mouth, Sam drives a knuckle into his brother’s forearm, eliciting a pissed-off mew, but at least Dean shuts his mouth. “What do you want with dad?” Sam asks, kinder than he’d planned to sound. Figures that given Alaric knows the big secret, pissing him off is probably not a good idea.

Alaric looks grateful to be asked. “I need him to teach me about vampires,” he says, low enough so they won’t be heard.

Dean scoffs. “Easy. No such thing.” He goes to stand and climb out of the booth. “C’mon, Sammy.”

“A vampire killed my wife, Dean. Seems like something John could relate to.” Alaric looks, in equal measure, tired, pissed off and determined. Dean regards him coolly, reaches for a napkin, and bending over the table, he scribbles something on it.

“Here,” he says. “Dad checks in there pretty often.”

Alaric reads the napkin, and Sam sees his face fall. “You’re a real asshole, Dean, you know that?” Alaric crumples the napkin, drops it on the table, and gets to his feet.

Dean maintains an innocent expression. “What?”

“Harvelle’s Roadhouse burned to the ground two years ago. Thanks for your help. Fuck you both very much.” Alaric glowers impressively at the brothers, and shakes his head. “I _will_ find your father. I found _you_. It wasn’t even difficult.”

Dean’s in front of Alaric in an instant, grabs him by the collar of his shirt. “Maybe you will, and maybe you won’t. But mention anything – and I mean _anything_ – to dad, or any other hunter, about me and Sam and I’ll track you down and feed you to somethin’ hairy.”

Alaric shoots Dean a look that’s somewhere between bored and incredulous. Probably, after having a knife held to his throat, other threats seem mild in comparison. “Yeah, that’s a conversation I’d want to have,” he scoffs, pulling his shirt out of Dean’s grasp. Alaric gives a sarcastic salute, drops some bills on the table and heads out the door.

Dean grins. “That was a lot easier than I thought it would be,” he says, draping a suggestive hand over his brother’s hip. “Another game?”

But Sam’s feeling like shit, and he’s not sure why. “We should have helped,” he says pushing Dean’s hand away. Dean gives a disgusted snort.

“Why? We don’t owe him dick,” Dean complains.

Sam watches the door for long moments. “If no one had helped dad -”

“If no one had helped dad, Sammy, you and me might’a had a life. Ever think about that?”

**

They’ve been back at the hotel about half an hour, and Sam’s had a shower, standing with a towel tied around his waist, brushing his teeth, while Dean cleans the guns.

Because things tend to even out, in general, the fact that they were just getting drunk in a bar that didn’t smell like feet and where the cook knew how to prepare a rare steak means they’re staying in one of the shittier motels in the area. Sam’s even brought the emergency bed sheets inside from the Impala, because, he says, there’s no way his bare skin is touching the sheets the hotel has provided. The television is literally all pay-per-view porn, and not the good kind.

“Do you think…” Dean’s voice trails away. “Should we be worried? Do you think he can keep his mouth shut?”

It’s a good question. Sam thinks hard. “He did have a point. How would you even start that conversation?”

Sam’s just about to ask Dean if they should maybe try to find Alaric, maybe give him a few pointers themselves, smooth things over, when there’s a knock at the door.

“You order room service?” Sam asks, frowning.

Dean shakes his head, bemused. “I don’t think they have it. If they do, I know I don’t want it.” He looks concerned, though.

Sam takes a gun, reassembled, holds it down low at his hip, and checks the peephole. Snorts in amusement.

“What?” Dean asks.

“You’re not gonna like this,” Sam grins. Dean narrows his eyes as Sam opens the door.

“You didn’t think it would be that easy to get rid of me, did you?” Alaric asks, expression cold. “I’ve been on the road nine days. I’ve covered over twenty-six hundred miles.” Even Dean has to be impressed by that statistic. “I’m not leaving without something and I’m not above putting a tracking device on your car.” He scratches his head. “Nice car, by the way. Bit conspicuous, though.”

Dean looks fit to be tied, but Sam is quietly delighted.

“Come in,” Sam says. “Have a drink.”

 

 


	4. It seems that everything we do is wrong

_Minneapolis, MN – Sioux Falls, SD – Seattle, WA_

Alaric spends the night in the same motel as Sam and Dean, there in Minneapolis, and when he hits the road again in the morning, he thinks to himself that at the very least, it wasn’t a total disaster.

Sam and Dean could have shot him and buried him in a shallow grave. They could have stuffed him inside the mattress, at that, and it would probably have been weeks before the smell of a rotting body overwhelmed the room’s other odours. Dean had actually looked tempted to test the theory. After Alaric had left their room, at about two in the morning, he’d sat for over an hour with his new notebook, writing down everything he could remember of what they’d said, useful or not.

(He’d had the notebook on hand while they’d talked, but couldn’t bring himself to pull it out and write in it. Not in front of Dean, whose eyes had stayed resolutely narrowed for the whole of the conversation.)

Unfortunately, the main thing that is clear to Alaric is that the only sure-fire way across all the lore (and in the Winchesters’ experience) in terms of killing vampires is to cut off their heads, and Alaric has never really used a weapon. Of any kind. There’s a general consensus that a stake to the heart works as well but their ribcages were stronger than human, and resistant, and short of building some sort of compressed-air stake-launcher, Alaric can’t see how a mere human like himself has a shot at staking one.

**

As Alaric drives, the next day, roughly west, he thinks. John isn’t going to want to talk to him. Alaric has nothing to offer. Doesn’t know why but he wants the man, legend he’s become in Alaric’s mind, to see more than a misguided academic, and he can’t see it happening, so he’s about ready to pack the whole idea in completely.

Suddenly, Alaric’s eyes grow foggy.

Compressed air is a brilliant idea. He pulls over to the side of the road, opens the notebook and starts sketching.

Alaric had chosen history, in spite of a gift for physics. To the delight of his mother and the chagrin of his father.

They were older, when he was born; a ‘miracle’, they called him, a ‘gift from God’ – but Alaric always suspected he was actually a horrible shock. When he was born, an only child, his mother was forty-three, his father forty-five. He spent his whole life explaining that no, his ‘grandparents’ weren’t young and spry – his _parents_ were old and fragile.

They loved him, but they didn’t understand him. Supported him, but looked forward to the day he left to do his own thing. Enjoyed his phone calls, now Alaric was an adult, as long as they were predictably timed and brief.

Isobel, they hadn’t got at all, mercurial as she was. She’d tried to dance with Alaric’s father at their wedding reception, and he’d looked so baffled by her that he’d pretended his hip was troubling him. The memory is as painful as it is funny, and Alaric sets it aside.

Pulls back onto the highway and drives until he finds a town where his mobile internet connection works. Mankato, MN. Orders two club sandwiches and a bottomless cup of coffee, hits the internet for the facts he needs and continues his sketching.

(Incidentally, the tensile strength of human bone is about 120 MPa, at best. The compressive strength is 170. Alaric figures he’ll double that, for his estimates. Plus, the correct angle, and you wouldn’t have to worry about the bone, you’d shoot straight up through the ribcage and the stakes would tear the head off almost as a side-effect.)

The ideal set-up for close combat would be something you could mount on your arm, but the easiest from a distance would be a crossbow. Not one that relies on a thread under pressure, for projection, but again on compressed air.

The waitress tops up his coffee. “Is there a hardware store in town?” Alaric asks, and she nods dully, taking a seat across from him, as she draws him a map.

The hardware store is _wonderful_. That is, if you need to keep foxes out of your henhouse, or change the washers in your taps, or clean your S-bend. Alaric rubs his tired eyes. Realistically, he needs supplies, enough to experiment with. A workshop, and time.

It’s clear where he needs to be. The only real question is whether to call Bobby from the road, or show up with booze again.

Alaric sticks with booze.

**

Bobby doesn’t look surprised to see him again – he looks incredulous and pissed off.

“Listen kid. If this is some imprinting thing, like with a baby duck, I’m not above giving you brain damage, on the off chance it’ll break it.” But he accepts the bottle, and Alaric knows he’s making progress with the old man because he is offered a glass of the Scotch he brought with him, instead of the frightening off-label moonshine.

Realises Scotch isn’t his thing, as he settles into a chair in front of Bobby’s crowded desk, too smoky; but doesn’t care much. Pulls and pushes books and papers aside, ignoring Bobby’s horrified expression, and opens the notebook, showing him the sketches. “I need supplies. Odds and ends, mostly. Machining gear.”

Bobby wants to be pissed off by the imposition, but despite himself, he draws the notebook close to his side of the desk. “Where’d you get these plans?” he asks Alaric, and Alaric resists the urge to preen.

“They’re mine. They need refining, but this can all work. Will all work,” he corrects himself, with a confidence he’s surprised he feels.

Bobby eyes him suspiciously. “You find the boys?”

Alaric raises his eyebrows. “Yep. So other than the gas cartridges -” But Bobby’s not done asking questions.

“How’d it go?”

Alaric meets Bobby’s interrogative gaze. “Awesome. We braided each other’s hair and talked about our feelings.”

Bobby smirks. “Dean served you your own ass in your own hat?”

“Tried to. Tried to send me to Harvelle’s. Look, I get it. I’m not gonna find John. Even if I do, he’s not gonna talk to me, fine, whatever. I don’t even care any more. I care about this.” Stabs his finger into the notebook. “I’ve learned enough. My wife was obsessed. Between her notes, Elkins’, and what Dean let Sam tell me, I’ll get by.”

Bobby watches him longer than he needs to. “You’ll get your fool self killed.”

Alaric rubs his eyes, throws back the rest of his drink, and amuses Bobby by pouring himself another without asking. “Maybe. Probably.” He notices his eyes are heavier than they have any right to be. He’s been sitting, all day, every day, for days, and should not be this tired.

(It should be said, Alaric has never spent this much time in a car. He doesn’t know what it’s like to roadtrip endlessly.)

It’s less than five weeks since Isobel died. Alaric sinks back into the chair, lets his limbs drape over the faded velvet upholstery. “How’d you get into this game, Bobby?”

Bobby flinches. “I watched too many episodes of the Twilight Zone as a littl’un.”

Alaric snorts, finishes his drink.

Bobby’s eyes are still on him. “You look like horsecrap, kid,” he says.

Alaric raises his eyebrows. “I feel even better.”

“I oughtta make you sleep in your car.”

Alaric shrugs. “Fine. Can I come in tomorrow and use your stuff, though? I can pay. I mean. I can’t pay much. But I’ll do whatever, anything you need around the place.” Alaric’s eyelids are thick, and he’s struggling to keep both eyes open. Bobby makes a disgusted noise, low in his throat.

“End of the corridor upstairs, there’s a guest room the boys use. You can sleep in there.”

Alaric startles. “You have a guest room? Why’d you make me sleep on the couch last time?”

Bobby wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “Cause I’m an ornery cunt, Saltzman. Go get some shut-eye. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Alaric barely remembers getting up the stairs. He changes into a pair of flannel pyjama pants, and plugs Isobel’s computer into a wall socket. Is about to crawl between the covers when he sees, in his mind eye, a pair of cold, silver eyes. He pulls the photograph of Damon Salvatore from his notebook and props it up on the nightstand.

In a room that smells of old smoke and comfort, Alaric sleeps the sleep of the just.

**

The next few days are odd. Productive, but odd. Bobby Singer treats Alaric Saltzman like a particularly interesting species of vermin.

Alaric is grateful that at least Bobby is a man who values breakfast. The first day, when Alaric drags himself down the stairs at a very embarrassing eleven a.m., Bobby rolls his eyes and informs him he’s way too late to expect to get fed.

“’s cool, Bobby,” Alaric says, yawning. “Dunno why I’m so tired. Been sittin’ on my ass for days on end.” Bobby gives him a look. Bobby knows what road tripping means.

(Alaric wonders if Bobby also knows why Alaric has started talking like he was born and raised in South Dakota, but he declines to ask. Something about growing up in South Boston; you become a chameleon, matching accent and vocabulary to every new place you go.)

But apparently Bobby is a liar, or intrigued enough by Alaric to have waited for his breakfast, because next thing Alaric knows, the kitchen is filling with the smell of maple-smoked bacon and eggs, toast and hash. Alaric smothers everything in Tabasco sauce, and Bobby clearly approves, because they eat their breakfast in companionable silence, and Bobby makes no comment.

“I ain’t helpin’,” Bobby announces. Alaric shrugs.

“I’ll get by. You got anything needs doin’ around the place? As payback?”

There’s a long pause as Bobby eats his third egg. Alaric is pleased the eggs are runny. He always feels like he’s been ripped off if the yolks are cooked solid. Bobby grimaces. “Sure I’ll come up with something.”

“I’ll go out later, if you want, for a supply run. I’m not gonna eat all your food.”

Bobby gives him an odd look. “Nice of you to offer. Sam and Dean pride ’emselves on emptying the fridge, when they stay.”

Day one, Alaric searches through piles of rubbish, looking for metal pipes that are bored to roughly the right gauge but don’t weigh too much. Lightweight sheets of steel and aluminium, enough to cut into the pieces he needs to make the trigger he’s designed. Just before it gets dark, Alaric sets off into Sioux Falls proper to buy some groceries.

In the car park of a Walgreen’s, he switches off the ignition, lies back a moment in the seat.

“Ric.”

Isobel’s lazy voice makes him turn his head. “Hey, you,” he says, calm, because although it has lost its novelty, Alaric craves these moments with his wife.

“Bobby seems like… a really good man,” Isobel says, pleased, cautiously drawing her feet up until she’s sitting on them, in the bench seat alongside her husband.

“Yeah. Really good man,” Alaric agrees.

Isobel crawls across the bench, and into her husband’s lap. “Do you trust him?” she asks, laying a line of kisses across Alaric’s forehead.

Alaric nods. He doesn’t want to close his eyes in case she disappears. “I do. See? I have people I trust.” He inclines his head to kiss his wife, and catches a flash of black-red in her eyes.

“Then why didn’t you go home when he told you to?” Isobel asks, white teeth flashing under the streetlight as her mouth descends to Alaric’s throat, faster than he can react.

He throws himself awake – an elbow hits his Jeep’s horn, bringing him the rest of the way back out of the dream, but he can’t prevent himself from grabbing at his throat, checking for blood.

**

Back at Bobby’s, Alaric cooks. “How do you like your meat?” he asks.

“Still complaining loudly that it got killed,” Bobby answers, drinking his standard ‘hunter’s helper’. Alaric’s not sure what it’s made out of. Other hunters, maybe. He’s on his second beer, throws a few vegetables onto the grill plate to absorb the juices.

Since Dean had asked Alaric if he was a ‘hunter’, the word had been zipping around Alaric’s mind. Not slayer. Hunter. He casts Bobby a glance, and turns the steaks over. “You need anything done around the place, Bobby?”

He’s starting to feel like an idiot, making this offer over and over again.

Bobby shrugs. “It’s all fallin’ apart just fine on its own,” he admits.

**

By the end of day three, Alaric has two working prototypes of his arm-mounted stake launcher. Straps one to his wrist and elbow. It’s more cumbersome than he wants it, but he has ideas about how to make it sit on his wrist only. This will do for now.

Bobby steps out into the wrecking yard with two beers, hands one over. “Does it work?” he asks, sanguine.

Alaric grins. “You got a mattress or somethin’ else needs killin’?” he asks.

Minutes later, they’re out behind Bobby’s house, a mattress up against a big tree. “The strength of your punch launches the stakes,” Alaric explains. He lines up and punches hard into the mattress. Bobby is impressed by the fact it’s a struggle to dislodge the stakes from the trunk of the tree on the other side.

“Not bad, kid,” he muses. Alaric reaches for Bobby’s arm, rolling up his sleeve, mounting both parts of the contraption. Shows him how to load the stakes.

“Unfortunately, the stakes have to be uniform,” he admits, chagrined. “Still.”

Bobby punches into the mattress, and though a man like Bobby never actually beams, it’s as close to that Alaric feels pretty pleased with himself.

“Mattress don’t give up much of a fight,” Bobby muses, leading Alaric back to the wrecking yard, re-loading the stakes. “Try that.” He points to the door of a wrecked truck. Alaric hesitates, wondering if he can put enough power behind the punch to break through without breaking his hand on the door.

Shrugs and gives it a shot, relishing Bobby’s expression when both stakes tear through the door of the cab.

That night, Bobby cooks his chicken parmagiana, “world famous in Sioux Falls,” as he claims.

Day five, Alaric’s in bits. Dreamed the night before that Isobel was a vampire, eating and fucking her way across the country. In the early morning light, he rolls over to find her, blissfully warm and human, tangling her hands in his hair. Half asleep, he places a kiss on her decidedly warm lips.

“Are you still alive?” he asks.

She runs her fingers over his chest. “What do you think?” she asks, in answer.

“You must be,” Alaric says, drawing her close. “You always answer a question with another question.” Rubs his erection into the downy-soft hair between her legs.

Wakes scared, and unsure of where he is.

The crossbow works beautifully. Alaric has designed steel-tipped arrows which impress Bobby with their ability to pierce the doors of the junkers in the yard, from a good long distance.

“Tends just a little to the right,” Alaric says, disappointed. Bobby snorts at him.

“Worth a correction like that, for a beauty like this,” he says, eyeing the launch mechanism.

“I think I’m gonna head out, tomorrow, Bobby. Unless you’ve thought of any work you need done?”

Bobby scratches at his chin. “Think I’m good, kid, If I can keep the stake launcher.”

Alaric laughs, hands him the crossbow they’ve been playing with. “I made you one of each,” he says. “Since you weren’t gonna let me do anything useful.” Claps the older man on the shoulder, and grins.

(It should be noted: grins naturally, and it’s been a while since that’s not been a forced gesture. Alaric feels… okay.)

Bobby eyes the crossbow appreciatively, and makes noises about cooking up some home-butchered venison.

That night, they eat a good dinner of venison steak, eggs and potatoes, and Bobby gives him some reluctant clues about how to find vampires; not ‘in general’, but right now. A pattern he’s been tracking in Seattle.

Alaric leaves before the sun is really up, leaving his phone number, a promise he’ll help any time he can, and a sincere note of thanks, and although he never sees it, Bobby’s expression when he reads the letter is unguarded, sorrowful, and thankful.

**

It’s 1600 miles from Sioux Falls to Seattle. Over and over, Alaric wishes he wasn’t alone.

“You’re not,” Isobel says, curled against his back in a hotel in Helena, Montana. “You have Ben, and your other friends… you have parents who love you, even if they’re old and senile… you have me,” she adds, gently stroking him erect.

Alaric closes his eyes against the lie. “I don’t have you. You’re dead.”

For the first time in the two months since Isobel disappeared, Alaric finds himself wondering if it’s true; and if it’s not, what the alternative might be.

**

 


	5. Another stupid page of history

_Seattle, WA_

John Winchester wakes in a crappy motel in Seattle with a killer hangover, cuddling an empty bottle of McKenna. Blinks in the late morning sun, rubs his eyes. Yawns and stretches.

“Did it again,” he mumbles to no one.

One of the things about hunting with Sam and Dean; he had more discipline. Had to be a good example for them. He hated his boys to see him looking weak. But they hadn’t hunted together, except when it was necessary, in nearly three years. So right now, at least four nights a week, John’s drinking himself oblivious.

John has never been an idiot and he knows Sam and Dean as well as he knows himself. He could see things shifting in the air between his boys, and by the time Sam had been out of school a year, had lost Jessica and law school and his one shot at normal it was clear that he and Dean had gone back to being a hell of a lot more than brothers. More than once John had taken off for an afternoon and come back to a hotel room that smelled like sex and guilt.

(And John understands – he does – the road is lonely, and sometimes you need someone to hold. Since his wife’s death, John has taken his pleasure where he finds it; it’s a lonely country with a lot of lonely people. Men. Women. He’s never had to pay for it, never had to look too hard, either. John only has one rule: _never_ another hunter.)

When Dean snuck out of the house and got drunk, as a teenager, John knew how to handle it. When Sam blew off target practice to hang out in a video game arcade, John knew how to handle it.

This, he couldn’t handle. Couldn’t address. So he’d turned tail in his GMC Sierra and left them to it. They shared info, caught up at Bobby’s from time to time. Called each other in on trickier hunts.

There was only one way John knew how to keep from tearing the two of them apart, and his own heart at the same time: told himself that what mattered was that his boys would kill for each other, die for each other. Maybe that was easier if they got a shot at living for each other as well.

Most of the time, he didn’t think about it at all. Much as he didn’t ask himself what Mary would say if she knew.

Clawing his way out of the crumpled sheets, he throws the empty bottle into the trash and staggers to the bathroom to scrub the bourbon from his pores. He only needs a couple more pieces of information and he’ll be setting out on a vampire hunt.

Knotting a towel at his waist, hair dripping, John grabs his ringing phone. Dicking around like a teenager, Dean had changed his ringtone the last time they’d seen each other. It was some irritating pop diva, who hopefully danced better than she sang. John couldn’t work out how to change it back. The upside: it’s too annoying to ignore, or to sleep through. He hits the green button.

“Bobby. You got something for me?”

“Nice to hear your dulcet tones too. Yeah. Turns out there’s a hotel downtown. Been closed for a couple years for renovations that never happened. Zoning or some such. That’s where they’re kippin’. You got a pen?”

“Mind like a steel trap, Bobby. Hit me.” Bobby gives him the address. It fits with the spread of the kills. “Where’s the intel coming from?”

Bobby pauses a moment. “Put it together myself.”

John narrows his eyes. “Riiight. How?” He can’t say why, but he smells bullshit.

“Google earth and the Seattle Times online. I’m not an idjit.”

John wants to press it. Doesn’t. Sighs again instead, hoping to convey to Bobby his general lack of plausibility. “Right. How many we talkin’ about?”

Bobby clucks his tongue. “From the number of vics, six or seven. When’d you get into town?”

“Yesterday. The poltergeist thing in San Francisco was a bitch.” John sits on the edge of the bed, lies back. “Might take a beat after this, Bobby.” He wrenched an arm badly last week pushing a bookshelf off himself and the low, deep ache in his shoulder has been bothering him ever since.

Bobby scoffs. “Yeah. I’ll believe it when I see it.” He ends the call, and John rubs his eyes, wishing he hadn’t used the last of his aspirin the day before.

It’s habit, more than anything, that forces him to make up the bed. Knows they’ll come and change the sheets anyway but his history in the Marines sees him make up any bed he ever sleeps in, precision corners and a duvet tucked so neat, tight as a drum, so firm you could bounce a baby off it.

Sometimes, it makes him a little sad.

**

When hunting vampires, the best time to go in is when the sun is at its highest. They get weaker, a little disoriented, if they go out in it, and it keeps them more or less contained. Keep one out in a hot sun for a few hours and they’re half crazy. But this is freakin’ Seattle. There hasn’t been any goddamned sun in four weeks and there probably won’t be any for another eight. So it’s either wait for a sunny Seattle day, and let the vampires munch their way through the whole music scene, or man the fuck up.

John stakes out the hotel, watching for places he can either climb over the fence, or force his way through it. Three possible points of entry. One would have John’s balls uncomfortably close to a coil of razor wire and gets knocked off the list.

The good thing about vampires making their nest in a hotel is that they won’t all be in the same room. They sleep during the day, and while that doesn’t mean they won’t wake up, John figures as long as he stays quiet, he’ll be able to sneak from room to room and kill them all. Of course, it’s a twelve storey hotel. It could take a while to find them all. Plus, if they’re keeping people somewhere, he has to get them out, too. They often do this, keep hot and cold running blood on hand so they don’t have to go out every night to feed.

Sometimes John misses having a partner to hunt with. But he and Bobby wouldn’t last a week before one killed the other and everyone else is either partnered, too old to still be in the game, or dead. He remembers back when he and Bill used to partner up for the occasional job – Ellen hated it, said they were like idiot brothers when they were together.

John’s surprised on a near-daily basis that he’s still alive himself. Refuses to contemplate the idea that he might be getting too old to do this. He still feels vital.

Most days.

Pauses a moment by his truck to gather wits and courage and weaponry.

John chooses his arsenal – two heavy machetes and a handgun with bullets he’s modified to deliver a small payload of dead man’s blood. It can’t kill them, but it makes them weak, sometimes too weak to get off the ground, and sometimes a second’s grace is all you need to keep yourself alive. Of course, it’s last-resort stuff. If he shoots, every vamp in the place will be awake and looking to kill.

Hoping this goes better than he’s expecting it to John climbs through the torn corner of a fence and stalks around the back of the building, to the loading dock they’re almost certainly using to come and go. Yep. They’re cocky enough that they’re not even keeping the door locked.

Once he’s inside, he starts to stalk through the ground floor. They won’t be down here. The hotel has an air about it – it wasn’t nice when it was still operating, but now the graffiti that adorns the walls, obscuring the wallpaper, makes it look like a movie set. For a bad horror film. A group of couches and armchairs, half-eaten by vermin and covered in a thick patina of dust, surround a large coffee table.

The stairs to the first floor are a fright; a dead woman, so pale she’s clearly been drained of blood, lies crumpled in the corner of the stairwell, her spine snapped, and John vows to call the police in a few hours, make sure the place gets cleared out. Who knows how many more bodies are hidden in the building. He notes the graffiti adorning the walls and hopes the taggers aren’t here, too, somewhere, dead. Worse: turned. Some vampires place a high premium on turning humans. Others prefer to do what they have to, and stay under the radar.

First floor. There are corridors in two directions, and John takes a moment to position himself mentally; one corridor will have a fire escape and the other won’t. He chooses the left side, first. Safer.

Most of the doors are closed and locked, and they use an electronic key. One of those credit-card looking things. There’s no power in the building, so they can’t disengage the locks. Any doors they’re using will have been kicked in, and in another moment, he finds the first. The wood is splintered at the jamb.

Toes the door open, creeping silently, and frowns deeply at the sight in front of him.

Vampires mate for life, and that can mean hundreds of years. There’s no telling how old this couple is, now. John can often get a sense of a vampire’s age, when they are alive – well, not alive. But walking around. Their clothing, their bearing, sometimes mannerisms or just an indefinable quality that experience teaches you to read as a year of birth and year of death.

But the woman on the bed, lying a couple of feet from her severed head? No clue. Her lover, who died far more horribly, on the ground? No clue. John crouches to the ground, trying to work out how the vampire died. He doesn’t want to touch the bloodied, half-desiccated corpse, but he swallows bile and pulls up the vampire’s shirt.

It looks like something impaled him, below the ribs, and projected far enough up into his body to tear his head off.

John is not a man easily scared. To survive more than a decade as a hunter, you can’t be easily scared. John has been a hunter for, well, considerably longer than a decade. Therefore, John is not scared.

John is, however, wary. Perhaps more wary than usual. Perhaps considerably more wary than usual. He steps back silently into the corridor, gun low at his left hip (now, that’s a bitch. Learning to shoot ambidextrously so you can save your dominant hand for your blade of choice. It is, however, a skill worth developing, in this line of work) and once he’s established that there are no more doors that can be opened, on either branch of corridor at this level of the building, he returns to the stairwell and moves up to the next level.

There are no doors accessible at this level, but the graffiti is incrementally spookier, and perhaps prophetic; hooded figures with blood-stained hems, cowering women and children. And of course, the odd hurriedly scribbled penis, drawn by someone who has clearly never seen one.

On the third floor, it’s a different story, but with a similar theme. John finds two beheaded vampires in one room, and a considerable amount of blood splatter leading back toward the stairs.

He debates calling Bobby. The whole ‘google earth and Seattle Times online’ line is starting to sound less like a fudge job and more like a great big pile of horseshit. There’s another hunter here, and not one John is familiar with.

On the fourth floor, it takes no time to find the unknown hunter. He’s grappling hard with a vampire, and John can’t make much sense of what he’s seeing – the man isn’t trying to get away, he’s trying to get a better angle with his fist. And since punching a vampire in the kidneys isn’t effective hunting, John can’t understand what he’s seeing.

Until a pair of stakes fly up into the vampire’s body and tear his head from his shoulders.

John recoils as the younger man turns on him, machete raised in his left hand. He drops it to his side soon enough.

Young. Low thirties, John guesses, with dark blonde hair, which is currently filthy with blood. A face which is altogether too open and trusting, and eyes which, while clear and intelligent, are currently torn between terror and curiosity. Stubble as ragged as John’s own. Good-looking guy, but rode hard.

There is a long, awkward moment where each is trying to make sense of the other’s sudden appearance, but they don’t dwell.

“There’s three more upstairs,” the younger man says, quietly. “Are you John Winchester?”

John casts appraising eyes from his head to his feet. “Depends who’s askin’.”

“Why is it every hunter I meet thinks he’s a comedian?” Shaking his head, Alaric moves closer to the door. “I’m Alaric. Ric. Alaric Saltzman.”

“Saltzman.”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck off out of my hunt, Saltzman,” John says, keeping his voice low. Alaric gives him a withering look, and continues.

“If you can take care of the last three, I’ll go downstairs. There’s an office full of… snacks,” he says, ignoring the order. “See you down there in a bit,” he says, after retrieving the stakes, wiping them down rather obscenely on his jeans, and reloading him onto some bionic arm thing that looks like it cobbled together from bits of old car and engine parts.

Old car and engine parts?

Bobby Fucking Singer.

Suddenly very motivated, John follows Alaric to the door of the stairwell. He heads upstairs, and Alaric heads downstairs.

For a moment, John’s tempted to ask him to help. Not because he needs it. Because he wants to see what the bionic arm can do. He doesn’t, however, as any encouragement he gives the kid now is going to make it more confusing for him when John kicks his testicles right into his throat and sends him packing.

The first two vampires are passed out in an alcoholic fog, stinking so strongly of gin that John thinks he can taste it in the air. One wakes slightly, but has less than a second to experience single life before he’s dispatched as surely as his wife is. And if the third vampire gets a little closer  to sinking two rows of razor-sharp teeth into John’s shoulder than he’d have liked him to – c’est la vie. Everyone dies eventually.

Splattered with gore, he checks the next floor, but finds it not only vampire-free, but relatively un-graffitied. And smelling very unpleasant. The next floor up smells so bad that John is confident nothing living or dead would choose to spend more than a second up there, and he retreats to the bottom level to find – and beat up – the interloper.

It should be said, the interloper has forced his way into the office and is helping a group of seriously ill-looking humans out and into the foyer of the hotel, carrying a woman to a couch and checking a wound in her shoulder. “Get them?” Alaric asks him absently. “Most of these guys can’t walk out of her under their own wind. We have to call ambulances.”

A man, perhaps in his forties, looks more baffled by John and Alaric than he is about the vampires who have been treating him like a juice box for the last few days. “Who are you?” he asks, but he looks a little healthier than the others, so John decides he can be the responsible adult.

“Starsky and Hutch,” he deadpans. “Are you alright?”

The man is pale – very pale, and dirty, and in need of a shower and a proper meal, but he nods. John grunts in approval. Doesn’t have a lot of time for people who piss and moan after they’ve been rescued.

“Here’s what’s gonna happen. We’re going to leave, and five minutes later, you’re going to use this -” he’d taken a phone from the nightstand in one of the vampires’ bedrooms. “- to call the police and an ambulance. If I see a picture of myself on the news tomorrow night, I’ll take it as a personal insult. So when the cops asked what I looked like – lie.”

Confused, the man’s eyes flicker to Alaric. “What about him?”

John regards Alaric coldly. “Him, you can hang out to dry.”

Alaric rolls his eyes, and it’s a gesture which brings Sammy so clearly to John’s mind that he feels his vision blur, for a moment; but it’s not helpful, so he sets it aside, double checks that the phone is charged, and hands it to the man. Passes an approving eye over the rest of the group. Leaves, determined not to so much as look at Alaric again, but isn’t surprised when, moments later, it’s clear he’s being followed.

They climb through the torn wire fence. John strides purposefully towards his truck, opens the back to replace his weapons. Alaric stands there, looking as conspicuous as fuck, blood splattered from head to toe, trying to pretend he’s not standing there with a machete.

“Can we talk?” he asks.

John raises an eyebrow. “Apparently, you can. I’m sure your parents are very proud. But I’m not talkin’ back, if that’s what you’re after,” he adds, closing the hatch.

Alaric narrows his eyes. “I’ve been looking for you for weeks,” he says. Sounds pissed. John has to suppress a grin.

“Was it everything you hoped for? Finding me?”

Alaric seems to consider this. “I thought you’d be taller.”

Alaric’s car keys are dangling from his hand. John grabs them, pulls his arm back, and throws them as hard as he can into a pile of rubbish and crates. “I’m tall enough,” he says, with a grin, as Alaric splutters and puffs and generally looks like he’s just found out there’s no Santa.

John can’t help but laugh at his rear view mirror, all the way back to the hotel.

 


	6. We claim to know the secrets, the answers have been found

_Seattle, WA – Tillamook, OR_

Alaric barely makes it to his Jeep and away before the cops arrive. Much as he’d love to explain his gore-splattered ensemble and car full of newly-accumulated weapons, he’s much more interested in Plan B.

Plan B involves getting back to his hotel so he can clean up, find John Winchester, and stake him.

Alaric manages to get back to his room without attracting any attention, which is the best thing that can be said for this day. Washing blood from his face and hair, he feels an odd sort of anti-climax.

Alaric had woken up just a few hours ago knowing that this was it – this would be the day. This would be the day it would go from theoretical – knowing how to kill vampires – to actually doing it. He’d jumped in with both feet, killed five of them.

And now, he wants to celebrate. Or, no, not celebrate – he just craves some kind of affirmation. And instead he’s here, on his own, preparing for the dull ache that always comes after an adrenaline high and a confrontation with John Winchester.

He lets himself sink to the shower floor, back up against the cool tile, water running rivulets over bruised skin and sore muscles. Lets his eyes drift shut.

“I’m proud of you, my Alaric,” purrs a familiar voice. Isobel, gloriously naked, presses her small, warm body into Alaric’s side, twists her hand over his arm. “You did it. Call it… a symbolic victory.” Presses a kiss into Alaric’s cheek. “You can go home, now,” she adds, almost as an afterthought.

“It was only step one, Is. The last step will be killing Damon Salvatore.”

Isobel sighs, and as Alaric lets his eyes drift closed once more, wondering if it’s possible to drown in a shower, she vanishes.

**

When Bobby calls, Alaric can hear he’s been laughing for quite some time.

“Found your keys, then, boy?”

“Yes sir,” Alaric answers. “Thinking up creative places to stick them as we speak.”

He’s still burning with humiliation, remembering the look on the hunter’s face, the vicious glint of amusement in his eyes. Bobby howls on the other end of the phone. Alaric wonders what John said to him.

“Sounds like you held your own.” Huh. Not all bad, then.

Alaric rubs his eyes, falls back on the bed. “I don’t think he likes me much, Bobby. Just a weird hunch I get.” Bobby laughs again. “I’m not sure if what tipped me off was the keys thing, or the fact that he told one of the victims to describe me to the police.” Bobby chuckles some more.

“He doesn’t like anyone much. Other hunters even less. Don’t take it personal.”

Alaric tenses. Did Bobby just refer to him as a hunter?

“You gonna pack it in, kid? Go looking for Rosebud?”

Alaric sighs. “Not yet, Bobby. Got a few tricks up my sleeve. He’ll talk to me if it kills one of us.” The smell wafting into his hotel room from a bakery somewhere nearby reminds Alaric that he’s starving. Bobby grunts.

“It might kill you _both_. Be smart. Call if you need me to talk you out of killin’ him. Or killin’ yourself.” He’s silent a moment. “How you feelin’, kid?”

Alaric sighs. “Hungry.”

“Good answer,” Bobby says, and disconnects.

Alaric dresses warmly and boots up the laptop. Asks himself why, instead of changing it, he’s still typing ‘Salvatore’ into the password prompt.

It takes him less than ten minutes to get what he needs. He grins, anticipating the look on John’s face when he shows up. After a moment or two practising his pissed-off face in the mirror, Alaric gets his coat and keys and takes off to find him.

**

This was totally worth it.

Alaric has to school his features. When John looks up from his drink, to find Alaric scowling down at him, the expression on his face speaks volumes.

(Volume 1: What The Fuck.)

Alaric wants to laugh, but he’s determined not to. Stands next to John’s booth, arms crossed over his chest, glowering, and waiting expectantly, while the older man gapes at him.

“How’d you find me?” he settles on, at last. Alaric pulls a small GPS tracker out of his pocket and shows it to him. John reaches for it, but Alaric pulls it away again, sticks it back in his pocket. John cocks an eyebrow. “Well played. Now, go away.”

Alaric shakes his head. “That was a dick move, John. I almost got caught.” He takes a seat across from John and drops his bag, with his notebook and the computer, on the seat next to him.

John shrugs. “Then you learned a very important lesson, kid. Never trust a hunter.”

Alaric cocks his chin at a waitress. Orders a couple of beers, and gets back to glaring at John. An odd expression flashes across John’s features. “What?” Alaric barks.

John shakes his head, lazy. “You remind me of someone.” Alaric doubts he wants to know who, so he doesn’t ask. John seems to resign himself to the fact that Alaric isn’t going anywhere. “You didn’t come looking for me to ask me for my soufflé recipe. What do you want?”

“I wanna learn from you, John. That’s all. There hasn’t been a vampire hunter like you since Daniel Elkins.”

John splutters. “Is there a freakin’ website or something? Where do you get your information? I know Bobby told you nothing. He values his life too much to piss me off.”

Alaric pulls the laptop and the notebook from his satchel. “My wife was obsessed with vampires. She led me to Elkins’ place and that led me to Bobby. Sam and Dean were piss-easy to find. I’m a researcher; if I want to find something, I’ll find it.”

John looks a little unsettled. “You spoke to Sam and Dean?”

Alaric nods. “About a week ago. In Minneapolis. Some baby-eating monster.” He waves a dismissive hand. “Dean was a dick but Sam talked a bit. Crazy shit. I’m barely used to the idea of vampires, and they’re rescuing babies from demons.”

John takes the notebook, and Alaric resists the urge to just grab it back. He’s barely interested, though, just flicks through, snorts derisively about the newness of it and puts it down again. “Your wife. She was obsessed with vampires?”

“’s what I said.” Alaric drops his eyes to his drink.

“‘Was’ obsessed?”

“Is there an echo in here?” Alaric holds John’s gaze, recognising it for the challenge it is. “Yes, John. Was, as in, she’s dead.” He leans back into the booth, runs a hand through his hair. “She was killed by a vampire. Bobby didn’t tell you?”

“He was a bit busy getting roundly abused for springin’ you on me,” John drawled. “You got that bionic arm on you?”

Alaric shakes his head. “Wasn’t planning on killing anything tonight, unless you stay this cagey. What’s the harm in talkin’ to me, John?” Alaric fondles his beer glass, maintaining his murderous glare. “Seriously. Isn’t more hunters in the world a good thing?”

Perhaps that’s the wrong thing to say. John’s face goes slack, his shoulders drop. “Don’t know,” he muses, scratching his chin. “I wonder about that myself, sometimes.”

Alaric finds himself running his thumb over the top of his notebook. Days, he’s had it, and he already feels protective and awkward about it. “How do you find them?” Alaric asks, at last.

“You know how.” John waves a waiter over. “Two more beers and two bourbon chasers. Keep ’em coming,” he adds, and Alaric feels oddly cheered. If John was planning to bail on him, he would have asked for the check.

Or, more likely, dumped Alaric with it.

Alaric tastes the bourbon, cautious. Thinks that maybe he likes it. It doesn’t have the overwhelming smokiness of the Scotch he bought for Bobby, and there’s a sweetness to it. After he swallows, he can taste honey on his breath.

“What do you mean, I know how?”

“How’d you get to that hotel today?” John’s default setting, Alaric thinks, is to challenge whoever is in front of him.

“Bobby put the pattern together.” He rolls his shoulders. “I did the rest. We -”

John’s phone rings, and he wrestles with his pocket, trying to get it out, a murderous expression on his face. He hangs up without answering, swearing under his breath, and Alaric laughs.

“Wouldn’t have picked you for a Lady Gaga fan, John,” he says, amused.

John grunts. “Fuckin’ Dean. I can’t work out how to change it back.”

“Here,” Alaric says, holding out his hand for the phone. “I’ll fix it.” It takes him about three seconds to switch the tone back to default, but he fumbles for a few seconds to give himself time to program his own number into the contacts list.

“Thanks,” John mutters, sticking the phone back into his pocket.

There’s a gradual shift. John seems to get more comfortable, and starts telling stories. By the time they are both good and drunk, Alaric is leaning lazily into the naugahyde bench and John is giggling like a fucking schoolgirl. He has, Alaric suspects, the longest eyelashes he’s ever seen on a man, and dimples of the sort Alaric hasn’t even noticed since before he married Isobel. His hair is greying, particularly on his face (something halfway between stubble and a short beard) but he still looks a lot younger than the sixty-odd years Alaric suspects he must have, because he’s still so strong and vital, radiates power and hard-won wisdom.

He is also lonely, in the way that only the truly lonely would ever notice.

The first hint of this is in the stories he tells – Alaric knows John hunts alone, almost always hunts alone, but the stories he tells are of those times when he had someone alongside him, Sam and Dean, or Bobby, Bill (Alaric knows Ellen Harvelle’s husband was named William, and surmises he and ‘Bill’ are one and the same), a few other names Alaric is familiar with, and some he doesn’t know.

At one a.m., the bar is almost completely packed up, chairs and stools up on tables, and the staff are glaring at them. John’s talked about vampires, shapeshifters, demons and angels, monsters Alaric has never heard of in any movie. A waitress pointedly brings a bill and John snickers.

“On you,” he says. “Chase me for five thousand miles and you get to pay for drinks. Ten thousand and you get a free set of steak knives.” He staggers to his feet, as Alaric signs the check.

Alaric chases him out of the bar, grabs him arm. “Wait. So, what do we do now?”

They’re standing beneath a streetlight. It’s cold, and Alaric shivers, pulling his jacket on. John cocks an eyebrow.

“I go back to my hotel. I suspect you spend half an hour puking in the alley and then do the same thing,” John says.

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

John sighs. Looks Alaric up and down in a way that feels like a test or a challenge and scratches his chin.

“I like you, kid,” he says, in a tone Alaric is already far too familiar with. “So I’m gonna do you a favour.”

Alaric’s shoulders drop. “Here we go,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Seriously?”

John ignores the fact that his speech has been pre-empted. “Go home, Saltzman,” he says, punching Alaric’s arm. “You’re gonna get yourself killed. Forget about the vampire that killed your wife. Revenge is a loser’s game. Take it from someone who knows,” he says, and Alaric notices the wedding ring the man still wears, thirty years after losing his wife. He turns it on his finger, in a gestures Alaric imagines he probably forms a thousand times a day.

Alaric wonders how long it will be before playing with Isobel’s ring is just as unconscious.

“I’m not going home, John.” Alaric stands his ground, crosses his arms over his chest. “I think you know that.”

John holds his glare for a long moment, and then shrugs. “Do what you like,” he says. “Just leave me out of it.”

Alaric fights the urge to stomp his feet. “Seriously?” He shakes his head, frowns so hard his face hurts a little. “I might be helpful. I can build weapons.”

“I have weapons.”

“You haven’t had a partner in years. You won’t give it a go for a couple of weeks?” Alaric shakes his head.

“I work alone, kid.”

“Don’t call me ‘kid’.” Alaric wants to throw something, but all he has on hand is his laptop and notebook, so he sticks to grumbling disgustedly.

John Winchester has been a lone wolf for a really long time. Clearly, it’s not making him particularly happy; if all his best stories feature co-stars, it shouldn’t be this hard to accept a fledgling, for a little while. Someone to teach, like he taught his sons. Someone to have his back, just for a while. Someone who is as eager to listen as John is to talk. And no matter what game he’s playing right now, John clearly wants to talk; has been doing it for hours, relishing the attention.

But John simply salutes, and turns in the direction of his hotel. Alaric’s about to leave as well, when John stops and turns, narrowing his eyes at Alaric. “You got any more of those tracking devices in my car?”

Alaric shrugs. “If I do, you’ll never find them,” he claims. (There are none, but he’s not going to admit that.)

John pauses again, and then seems satisfied. “Go home, kid,” he says again, and heads off up the street.

**

It takes a while for Alaric to hail a cab, but it’s only a short trip back to the hotel.

He strips down to his boxers and crawls between the sheets, pissed off and disappointed in equal measure.

There’s something wrong. Drunk and miserable, he should be asleep, and then he realises what the problem is. Pulls the photograph of Damon Salvatore out of his notebook and props it up against the lamp on the nightstand.

“He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” Isobel sighs.

“Some of the most dangerous creatures in nature are,” Alaric answers. Isobel is sitting on the bed, wearing the clothes she died in, shirt torn and drenched in blood. “Spiders come to mind.”

“He’s so your type. Remember the guy you were seeing just before you met me?”

Alaric closes his eyes against the memory. Isobel grips his thigh through the sheet.

“I don’t like John Winchester,” she growls. Alaric doesn’t answer. Suddenly, Isobel is in his arms, under the covers with him, clean clothes, smelling like the perfume she always wore. He can actually smell her, she’s that real. “But I’m glad he told you to leave. He’s right, you know. They don’t want you. None of them. Bobby, Sam and Dean, John…”

“I don’t care if they want me, Is,” Alaric says, nuzzling her face into his neck. “I need them. I have to find Damon Salvatore.”

“Even if you lose yourself along the way?”

Alaric wakes alone, as he always wakes alone, packs his things into the Jeep, and goes to find breakfast.

He calls Bobby from a diner, wasting an hour over toast and eggs and meat piled so high it’s nearly art.

“How’d you go?” Bobby asks him, though his tone says he already has the answer he’s looking for.

“What’s wrong with him?” Alaric complains. “He’s a lonely old curmudgeon, and I’ve already proven I’m not completely useless.”

Bobby’s silent for a long time. “You remind him of his boys, I’d bet,” he admits at last.

Alaric shakes his head. “That makes no sense. If that was true, he’d want to teach me.”

Bobby disagrees. “Single biggest regret in that man’s life is draggin’ his sons around the country, fightin’ monsters, instead of givin’ ’em a life,” he says, “but if you ever tell John I said so I’ll deny it.” He sighs. “What’re you gonna do now?”

“You got any leads for me?”

“Nothin’.”

“I’ll find something, Bobby. Call me if you think of anything.”

A couple of hours on the internet yields something interesting. A body dump in the Tillamook State Forest, which is only about a hundred and fifty miles away. The paper says it’s an animal attack, but Alaric’s never heard of an animal that helpfully piles its victims up after killing them.

After stopping at a hardware store for wooden dowels in the gauges he needs for the stake launcher and the crossbow, and having them cut to the lengths he needs, Alaric hits the road.

He’s barely outside the outskirts of Seattle when it hits him again. The bone-deep exhaustion of the road. Killing vampires is less tiring than this. He pulls into a rest stop off the highway for a nap, and Isobel crawls into his arms.

“Is?” Alaric says, cautious, because she’s crying, and Alaric can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen his wife cry.

“Go home,” is all she’ll say, as she twirls the ring on his finger, and he has to pinch himself awake.

 

 


	7. To live and die is still a mystery

_Tillamook, OR_

There has been a very strange body dump in a national park less than a hundred and fifty miles from Seattle. Officially, animal attacks, for now, because the vics have all had their throats torn out. But someone John knows – one Dr Patrick Jacobs – not a friend, per se, but someone who owes John for saving his life and has a vested interest in not having vampires living near him calls to describe what’s happening.

“It’s about thirty bodies. Could be more. Some of them were buried, and we’re not done investigating. Still a lot of digging to be done.” He sounds tired on the phone and it’s no wonder; he’s a small-town coroner, still waiting for federal backup. He can’t deal with that many autopsies.

“So they’ve been there a while. Wonder how many there are.” John scratches his chin.

“The freshest bodies – eight – have all been killed in the last three or four days.” Patrick pauses. “With my luck, I’m betting you’re in either Florida or Maine, John. Any idea when you could get here?”

“Actually, I’m in Seattle. Couple of hours, tops.”

After he disconnects the phone, John considers calling Sam and Dean. Finding out where they are, anyway, in case this is going to be a difficult hunt. But when he goes to his contact list, there it is on the very top: Alaric Saltzman.

John debates with himself for long moments. Sticks the phone in his pocket, and heads out the door.

**

Over a breakfast of pancakes and sausages, drenched in Tabasco sauce, John makes a few calls. Sam and Dean are in Knoxville, Tennessee, hunting a werewolf down. It would take them days to get here. John calls Bobby. Just to check in. See if he has any ideas, knows anyone nearby.

“Yeah, I got an idea. Call the kid.”

John frowns. “I told him to go home.”

“But you know he didn’t. You know what strays are like.”

“He’s not a hunter, Bobby. I got a bad feeling about this. Seems like a bunch of vampires that have given up staying under the radar. Or maybe they got a newbie or two. The young ‘uns can’t control their appetites.” Consulting his atlas, he figures it’s a two hour drive, tops. But the national park is pretty big. Probably, there’s a hunting cabin or something there where they’re bedding down. “You want to be responsible for seeing him get himself killed? I don’t.”

“Less likely to get himself killed if he’s got someone showin’ him the ropes,” Bobby grumbles. “Call Jimmy Butler, maybe. He lives in Oregon, don’t he?”

John freezes. “Ah, yeah. He does.”

Bobby waits for a long moment. “You two have words?”

“There were… words. And then he shot at me. Just at my foot, really. Misunderstanding.” John grimaces. “Only partly my fault.”

Bobby snorts disgustedly. “What about Jane and Phillip Manning?”

John thinks hard. “Maybe I should let that whole ‘thing’ settle down a little longer before I call them.”

“You haven’t apologised to them, have you? Idjit.” Bobby sighs.

“I did. I swear, Bobby, I apologised. But I doubt I’ll be their favourite person for a while.”

“Call the kid, do it by yourself. I think that’s all your options, in a nutshell.” Bobby hangs up with an irritated grunt.

John looks at his phone’s contact list again, wondering.

On impulse, he deletes Alaric’s phone number. So he can’t be tempted.

**

It takes two days of sneaking around the morgue, lying to the police over the phone and stalking through the national park, trying to find likely routes to the body dump. The local cops are suspicious of John’s credentials (possibly his fault; he’d fumbled a CDC ID card before finding the one he’d been after) and he’s doing his best not to get noticed.

Here’s what he knows:

Definitely vampires, and they’re settled. The oldest bodies that have been found are a couple of years dead. The newest, well, a couple died quick, but others were emaciated, had been kept locked up somewhere for a few weeks before they died.

There are hunting cabins dotted through the forest. Some are little more than shacks, but others are almost houses. The better ones have basements and Bobby figures it’s going to be one of them. A basement would be a good place to keep someone locked up as a midnight snack.

One Bernard Schneider, a hunter himself (a normal hunter – John spends almost a whole second being impressed by the fact the man once killed a bear that had almost certainly killed five campers), went missing about two years ago. According to the city records, Bernard Schneider and his brother built a hunting cabin about fifteen years back. There’s a basement, and three bedrooms. John finds the plans in the town archives.

John’s cautious, sets out in time to arrive about a mile from the cabin a little before high noon. By some miracle, it’s a clear day – the vampires aren’t going to want to spend too long outside.

He’s been walking about ten minutes when he sees something that makes his heart stop; a newly familiar brown Jeep.

“What’re you doin’, kid,” he mutters under his breath.

The house is silent. In the kitchen, he finds a decapitated vamp (done the traditional way, by cutting the head off, instead of by launching stakes up through it body so the head gets torn away, which, while cool, is something John finds a little showy). In one bedroom, one dead in the bed, and another half torn apart just inside the door.

Worryingly, there is also a significant amount of blood spatter leading away from the bedroom. It’s still very quiet. John has to resist the urge to call out – something along the lines of ‘get out here, Saltzman, and hold still while I kill you’ but he stays quiet, sneaking through the house, machete in his right hand and gun low on his hip in his left.

In the last bedroom, he finds what he was afraid of. Alaric, on the ground and far too still, a vampire in a hideous denim jacket and mullet firmly attached to his neck. John pulls him off by the hair – he’s so intoxicated by Alaric’s blood that he takes a moment to react, and it gives John all the time he needs to swing the machete once, in a perfect arc, and finish him for good.

John drops to his knees. “Is that the last one?” he asks.

Alaric, eyes unfocussed, manages to nod. John tears at his shirt to assess the severity of the damage and clamp a firm hand over the wound in his neck.

Alaric’s eyes never leave John’s.

“You’ll be alright, kid,” he says, lifting Alaric’s shoulders up, so the wound is higher than his heart, resting Alaric’s upper body on his leg. “Feels like the bleeding’s slowing already.”

A glimmer of something like scepticism crosses Alaric’s features. In the seconds before he dies, Alaric Saltzman has no illusions about what’s about to happen. Meets it head on. Not a tear in his eye.

It would actually be pretty impressive, if it wasn’t such a fucking waste.

After pulling Alaric’s keys from his pocket, it’s the work of fifteen minutes for John to bring Alaric’s jeep up to the house. Inside, he wrestles Alaric’s jacket off him – it’s heavy with blood, and John’s wondering how much of Alaric actually got swallowed and how much of him is soaked into the lining.

Alaric’s eyes are still open.

It’s not actually easy to close the eyes of a fresh corpse (and he might have been a young man, strong and brave, just a few minutes ago, but he’s a corpse now. John’s handled enough dead hunters – and enough dead people in general – that he can’t get sentimental), but John feels an overwhelming need to try.

Days ago, John told Alaric he reminded him of someone. What he didn’t say is that he reminds John of himself, back in the days after Mary died, hell-bent on revenge and answers, full of piss and vinegar. Running around the country, pissing off other hunters, unforgivably dragging the boys with him, as often as not.

He tries to close Alaric’s eyes, but they spring open and John has to look away.

It’s starting to rain, as John throws Alaric’s body over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and throws him into the back seat of the Jeep.

From the driver’s seat, he calls Bobby.

“How’s the hunt going?”

“Great. Great. Saltzman worked out where home base was and killed three vampires.”

Bobby sounds pleased. “You called him? Didn’t think you would -”

“Nope. Did it on his own. I got here just as the fourth one killed _him_.”

Bobby is silent, and John’s known him for twenty-five years, long enough to know he’s taken off his hat and is pouring himself a glass of something flammable.

John wants to be angry. At Bobby, for encouraging the kid. At Sam and Dean, for telling him enough that he managed to get himself in the thick of two vampire hunts in less than a week.

At himself, for not giving the kid a thorough beating and sending him back to wherever the fuck he came from.

He feels less angry than sad.

“What’re you gonna do?” Bobby asks.

John rubs his eyes; this is a nightmare. “Kid died a hunter, Bobby. I’m gonna build him a pyre, same as I would for you or anyone else, and then when it gets dark tonight, I’m gonna light it.”

Bobby sucks a little air through his front teeth. “You can’t do that.”

“Course I can.”

“Saltzman might’ve died a hunter, John, but he didn’t live like one. He’s got friends somewhere. Parents, maybe. You reckon he told them what he was getting’ himself into, when he hit the road?”

John frowns. “Your point, Bobby?”

“My point is you light that pyre and no one who cares about him will ever know what happened to him.”

John swears under his breath, scratches his chin. “Well, I gotta do something. For now, I gotta get out of here. Stash him somewhere and come back for my own truck.”

“John?” Bobby says, soft. “Don’t blame yourself.”

“I don’t. I blame everyone _but_ myself.” Knows Bobby can hear the lie in his voice. “I’ll talk to you later, Bobby.” Disconnects the call and turns the engine over.

After a few moments debate with himself, in which John considers texting the bad news to someone on Alaric’s contacts list and letting the whole mess clean itself up, he decides. It’s true. People go missing. It’s hard on the ones left behind.

But if you die a hunter, you get a hunter’s funeral.

There’s a clearing, big enough for a pyre, that John discovered the day before. Far enough away from civilisation that he’ll be able to light the pyre without attracting attention. The rain’s a bitch. It’ll make it harder to set the fire. John parks the Jeep and starts collecting firewood, piling it up.

This is one of those times a partner would be handy, he thinks, and then his mind drifts to the corpse in the back seat. The down side of having a partner is that sometimes, they die.

Sometimes they die way too fucking young.

John debates punching a tree until he feels his hand break, and decides against it.

There’s movement in the Jeep.

John swears under his breath. Fortunately, has the machete in his hand, ready to chop up brush for kindling.

Killing vampires is less easy when they used to be someone you knew, and maybe even liked a little bit. John’s only had to do it a couple of times; knows Dean and Sam have too, and Bobby did it four times in one year.

And, he reminds himself, Alaric is no one to him. He’s known the kid less than a week.

And yet.

Alaric is opening the passenger door, disoriented, and starting to climb out when John yanks him roughly to the ground by his t-shirt, raising the machete high in the air.

Alaric seems to be totally confused, raising his hands. “John! What the fuck?” He coughs, and that gives John pause; vampires are a robust lot, not prone to coughing or sneezing.

“Sorry, kid,” he says, resolute. “Best thing for it. You don’t want to be a vampire any longer than you have to be.”

“m’not a vampire, John!”

He’s panting, hard, and vampires don’t have to breathe; but that doesn’t mean they can’t. Of course, if he was a vampire, he’d probably be fighting, instead of begging for his life.

It’s sort of a pathetic sight, actually. Alaric’s shirt is half torn off and covered in blood, and his eyes are wide with fear.

And he seems to be shivering. John has never seen a vampire shiver. They’re not affected by the cold.

John gets to his knees, dropping Alaric onto his back on the wet ground. He holds the machete to his throat, and for less than a tenth of a second, something approaching amusement crosses Alaric’s features. John reaches for the right side of Alaric’s upper lip, lifting it – perhaps a little rougher than he strictly needs to be – to examine his gums.

There are none of the telltale bumps that vampires have, showing that there is a second set of teeth hiding, ready to descend.

John shifts his hand, lifts the left side of Alaric’s upper lip. Nothing.

“Why would you think I was a vampire?” Alaric is definitely shivering, in his torn t-shirt, on the wet ground.

“Because you’ve been dead for an hour and a half. And now you’re not. And your neck’s healed.”

Alaric makes a move as if to reach up and touch it, but the machete’s in the way. “Could you maybe put that thing away?”

John stands up, holds the machete to his side. Alaric feels his neck. Definitely no wound, but there’s still a lot of blood, drying on his skin. He’s pale.

“Is that a Winchester fetish? Threatening to cut someone’s throat?”

And then Alaric’s back to sort of impressive. John wonders which of his boys threatened Alaric with a knife, and knows almost instantly that it was Dean.

“Got an explanation, kid?” John reaches down to help him up.

Alaric pulls himself up to his elbows, and eyes John in irritation. “Don’t call me kid.” He climbs to his feet unaided, rubbing at his arms in an attempt to warm up.

The whole thing is way too surreal. “I’m not a doctor, but I know how to check for a pulse. You _were_ dead,” John says. “Any idea why you’re alive?” He throws the machete into the front seat, takes off his jacket and drapes it over Alaric’s shoulders.

With a grateful look, Alaric shuffles his arms into it, nods his thanks. “I have no idea. Are you sure…?”

John snorts. “Dead’s dead. No pulse, no breathing? Sort of a giveaway.”

Alaric grins, and for a moment, John gets a glimpse of the man he probably used to be. “But like you said, you’re not a doctor.”

“Even if you were only _nearly_ dead before, this is a miraculous fucking recovery.”

Alaric freezes, suddenly, and after a long moment, he brings his hand to his face. “My ring.”

It’s a big, ugly thing. John had noticed it the other night, but didn’t comment. Kids these days, they wear the most ridiculous junk. But Alaric is looking at it almost in fear. “My wife gave it to me. It’s hideous, right?” He shakes his head, twisting the ring on his finger. “She made me swear I’d always wear it. Said it would protect me from ‘the things that go bump in the night’.”

“Supernatural death,” John says, barely breathing it.

Alaric drops his hands to his sides. “What do we do now?” He pulls the jacket closer around himself, still shivering.

John examines him a long time. “We go get my car. We head into town. We get you cleaned up. And then we get drunk.”

Alaric nods. “How do I know you’re not gonna ditch me?”

John grins in reply. “Tell you the truth, kid?” He cocks his head, crooks an eyebrow. “You just got a whole lot more interesting.”

**

A couple of hours later, John is checking into a hotel room. Alaric needs to clean up, and no one would give him a room covered in gore. Alaric showers and changes his clothes, after throwing everything he had been wearing into a plastic bag. While Alaric showers, John finds a garbage bin down an alley to throw it into.

The days are short, right now, and it’s almost dark by the time John and Alaric stumble into a bar a couple of doors away from the hotel.

They take up a corner booth, order beer and bourbon. John tries to keep his eyes off Alaric – it’s so surreal, knowing he was dead this afternoon – but he can’t, and settles for trying to avoid meeting his eyes. Alaric doesn’t seem to notice, but he seems to be trying to avoid meeting John’s eyes as well. They drink in silence, despite the fact John has a thousand questions. Order steak and chips and _eat_ in silence. John’s default is usually to push, and push hard, when he wants to know something, and he can’t work out why he’s not doing this now. Alaric is struggling with something, mind a whirl.

John’s heard of jewellery that can mask a person from certain sorts of demons. Amulets that make you impervious to a witch’s powers. But he’s never heard of a ring that protects from supernatural death; wouldn’t have believed such a thing existed, if someone had told him yesterday.

But he had felt Alaric die. Felt his body make that shift from barely moving to dead weight. Seen the light go out in his eyes.

Avoiding each other’s eyes is getting increasingly difficult to do.

“Why wouldn’t she have worn the ring herself?” Alaric asks, face open, cracked with grief. Almost pleading. “She was goin’ out there, lookin’ for vampires. If it could have protected her why wasn’t she wearin’ it? Makes no sense.”

“Show me,” John says, and Alaric pushes his hand across the table. John lifts his hand. It would be easier to take the ring off and look at it by itself, but he can’t bring himself to even suggest this. He holds Alaric’s hand up, just barely off the table, examining the design.

Black stone with some silver image in the middle, so old it’s worn down to a soft blur. The stone could be onyx, or maybe obsidian.

John has never had much interest in the magical properties of stones. Using them means knowing witchcraft, and witchcraft is gross; it’s all spooky fluids and body parts.

Alaric’s hand closes over John’s.

John’s eyes flicker to Alaric’s face. Alaric barely seems aware of what’s going on around him, let alone that he’s basically holding John’s hand. John feels a strange flush, something old and near-forgotten, as Alaric’s hand tightens over his.

“Saltzman,” he says. Alaric doesn’t even look up.

“Saltzman,” John says again, louder. Alaric’s eyes flicker up and meet his. “Can I have my hand back?”

Alaric seems suddenly aware of what he’s doing, and yanks his hand away. He throws back the last of his bourbon and leans against his seat back, like he needs it to stay upright.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I think…” he rubs his eyes with the back of his wrist. “I’m really, really tired. I’m sorry. This is crazy shit. I need to go.” He stands, unsteady. “Can I have the room key?”

“I could sleep, too,” John answers. Stands as well, and heads for the bar to pay.

They’re only a couple of doors away from the hotel. In silence, John unlocks the door of the hotel room. Far from the worst place he’s ever stayed in; far from the worst place he’s stayed in this month. Alaric follows him in, lacklustre, dropping his wallet and phone on the small kitchenette bench.

John can’t wait another second; bunches his fists in Alaric’s shirt, almost violent. Throws him hard against the wall and takes his lips in a bruising kiss, thinking the whole time, stop, you idiot.

But when he realises Alaric is kissing him back, he sets the thought aside.


	8. The horn of plenty is bursting at the seam

_Tillamook, OR_

Alaric has been kissed before. Quite a lot. By women, by men. Feather-soft brushes of lips, all the way through to passionate, devouring kisses. Kisses that mean there is something just starting and kisses that mean the end is in sight.

You can communicate a lot, with a kiss.

Alaric’s head hurts a little where it met with the wall, but he’s ignoring that in favour of trying to make sense of this particular kiss.

It’s like a battle, maybe. Or like celebrating a victory in battle; Alaric fought death, today, and he won, and that could be why he tastes copper, why his lips are swollen and sore, why his mouth is being so expertly explored, why he’s holding John’s hair like it will keep him anchored to the world. Alaric feels himself groan as John nuzzles into his neck; and even that, usually a gentle gesture, is backed by an undercurrent of near-violent want.

There is affection in this kiss as well, but an odd sort of affection; like John has found something he didn’t know he wanted or might like, but now he has it, he’s going to run with it. Alaric, for his part, knows why one of his arms is snaking its way around John’s huge chest. The feeling of it – the weight of this man, the strength in his chest, in his arms – it’s exactly what Alaric needs, right now.

The sensation of stubble, rubbing against stubble, so acutely masculine – this could be what unravels Alaric, in the end. Certainly it causes him to moan, to kiss even harder, even deeper, causes a sound to erupt from his throat – a sound he can’t name.

John starts to grapple with Alaric’s shirt, and Alaric helps him, fast as possible. Wants those firm lips on his again. John’s eyes are blown black with lust, and Alaric tugs on his shirt, too, wants the contact. Urgently. Shirt off, John tugs at Alaric’s jeans, pulling him towards the bed.

Alaric straddles John, leans to kiss him. They’re both hard, and Alaric finds himself grinding his cock against John’s, craving the friction, kissing his way down John’s throat and chest. John groans, shivers, reaches for Alaric’s belt. Alaric can’t help it; he laughs. “Slow down, John,” he whispers into John’s mouth. “We’ve got time, here, y’know?”

Apparently, it’s the wrong thing to say.

John frowns, and stills. “Jesus,” he says.

Alaric angles his body away, so he can see John’s face. “What?” he asks.

John closes his eyes, covers them with one huge hand. “I shouldn’t be doing this,” he mumbles, voice scratching.

Alaric’s heart sinks, and he tries to ignore what he’s heard, instead mouthing his way up John’s jaw, relishing the roughness of the stubble against his soft lips.

John tenses and pushes him off, none too gently. Alaric groans, lying on his back on the bed. “What?”

“This is crazy,” John breathes, more to himself than to Alaric.

Alaric shakes his head. “You think too much. So do I. I just…” Rubs his eyes, lets his hand fall again. “Want to _stop_ thinking for a while.”

“You were dead, a few hours ago, kid,” John starts, and Alaric rolls part of the way over and punches him, hard, in the arm.

“Considering what was about to happen here, I think you should stop calling me ‘kid’.”

John snorts. “Considering what was about to happen here, I think you should be a lot more suspicious of your ability to make good decisions.”

Alaric shakes his head, propping himself on one elbow. “Jesus. You’re impossible.”

“So they tell me.” John hasn’t moved, still covering his eyes with one hand.

John’s arms are heavily tattooed. Some of the tattoos look like protection runes, similar to the ones Alaric found at Daniel Elkins’ house. Others come from John’s earlier life in the Marines. He’s actually not as hairy as Alaric had suspected he would be, and he’s covered in scars, which affect Alaric rather more than he wants to admit they do.

One of the worst scars, thickly textured and almost two inches long, wide as Alaric’s thumb, sits neatly above the curve of John’s hip. Alaric reaches a tentative hand out to touch it. Runs the pad of his index finger from the top to the bottom of it. John’s breath catches in his throat.

“How’d you get this?” Alaric asks, tentative.

“Same place I got ’em all,” John answers. “Hunting. It’s dangerous, Saltzman.”

(Alaric doesn’t know why so many people insist on calling him by his surname. Still, he prefers this to John calling him ‘kid,’ so he says nothing.)

“Not for me, apparently.” Alaric sits up, disappointed, frustrated.

“Saltzman?”

Alaric doesn’t look at him. “What?”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…” Whatever the fuck it is he was planning to say next is swallowed, and Alaric is irritated.

Alaric makes a disgusted sound, deep in his throat. “You’re not the only person in the room, John,” he says. “I was in this too.” He stands up, retrieves his shirts from the floor.

“What are you doing?”

“’m gonna go find out if it’s too late to get another room,” Alaric answers, and just like that, it’s back on; John drags him back to the bed, claiming his mouth again, tugging urgently on Alaric’s bottom lip with just a hint of teeth.

“Stay,” John says, softly.

This is more like it.

They both kick their shoes off, and Alaric gives up any and all attempt to control the pace, tearing at John’s belt and buttons just as frantically as John is at his, stepping back for barely a second to get his pants off, and then forcing John back down onto the bed.

“You’ve walked into two vampire nests in four days, and this is still the dumbest thing you’ll do this week,” John says, pulling Alaric’s hips towards his, grinding their cocks together.

“Yeah, yeah,” Alaric says. “Save the romantic bullshit, John,” he adds, as John reverses their positions, kissing and nipping his way down Alaric’s body, and all rational thought is temporarily ceased, as John runs his tongue over the leaking head of Alaric’s cock. With one hand on the base, kneading away, he runs his tongue over the throbbing tip, before running his lips… well, everywhere, and then just as Alaric thinks he can’t take it anymore, John’s mouth is sealed over him completely, sucking hard, and Alaric becomes one big moan.

One of John’s hands is trying to snake its way under Alaric’s ass, and Alaric raises his knees, trapping John’s face between his thighs, to give him better access. John seems to change his mind, pulling away with a disappointing wet sound.

“Roll over,” John says, cheeks flushed, and Alaric, who is at this point completely sloppy, debauched, and really, there’s no excuse, they’ve barely started – but it’s been months, now, since he really felt good, and damn, but he feels good, John’s hand stroking him with languid pumps, John’s mouth between the cheeks of his ass, licking and kissing his rim. Alaric shudders, as John enters him with one finger, just past the knuckle, as John shifts until his lips are at the back of Alaric’s neck, coarse hair brushing softly against the bare skin there.

“How long has it been?” he asks, quietly, rubbing soft kisses over Alaric’s shoulder.

“Years,” Alaric admits. “Since before Isobel.” He groans, as John forces his finger in a little further, moves his finger a little. “I’ve got – ah, fuck, that feels good.” John grins into Alaric’s back, and Alaric imagines he can feel the dimples there.

“You’ve got…?”

Alaric bites back another moan. “Condoms. Lube. In my duffel.”

John draws away, and Alaric instantly misses the contact. “In the zipper pocket on the front,” he adds.

“Regular fuckin’ Boy Scout, Saltzman,” John mutters, with a chuckle, as he crouches on the ground, unzipping the pocket.

Alaric makes no move to help; he’s a pile of messy nerve endings. “I don’t think the Boy Scouts make a badge for this, John.”

“You always carry this with you? Seriously?” The next thing Alaric knows, John’s curled around his back again, fingers well lubricated, and blissfully, two fingers deep in Alaric’s ass.

Alaric can barely think, let alone speak. “Before I left home, a friend reminded me – oh, Christ, that’s good – that I get kinda slutty when I’m depressed.”

John laughs, scissoring his fingers, stretching Alaric out a little.

Alaric married Isobel knowing it meant he’d never have this, again, and he’d told himself he wouldn’t regret it; but he knew, even then, that he’d miss it. There’s bisexual, and there’s bisexual. Some people don’t mind if they are with a man or a woman. They talk about being attracted to the person, not the gender.

Alaric is different. Hewants, he _craves_ , both men _and_ women, wholeheartedly, and more than once, while married, he’d come close to straying. Hadn’t, because Isobel had told him she couldn’t bear it if he did.

Of course, in the end, it was Isobel who had betrayed Alaric, so utterly, seeking out vampires, getting herself… killed.

John adds a third finger, and Alaric finds himself pushing back against the pressure, rolling his back up hard against John’s chest, as John rubs in and out, clearing a path that hasn’t been used like this in years. When John pauses to add a fourth finger, Alaric rolls his head back over John’s shoulder.

“It’s enough. It’s enough,” he says, and John nips playfully at his throat.

“Trust me,” he says. “You’re gonna need this.” John expertly stretches Alaric out, slow, gentle, and Alaric’s body seems to remember. He’s torn between pushing back against John’s fingers, and pushing up into his hand. The hand which, disappointingly, has suddenly gone away.

A few moments later, John’s rolling a condom on, angling himself right, and even this, Alaric’s body remembers; the brief moment of pain, so delicious, and then the feeling of being completely full, taken, and in no time, they’ve found their rhythm.

Alaric feels the intimate pressure, the fingers at his hips, his back, knows that tomorrow he’ll feel a pain that he’ll love and hate in equal measure. He measures the pressure of those fingers, maps out in his mind how deep the bruises will be, and then just rides it.

Bruises fade.

John’s dick is almost certainly the biggest thing Alaric’s ever had up his ass, and if not for the insistent pressure against his prostate as payoff, it might actually be too much. Alaric finds himself pushing back, hard, feeling the vibration of John’s groan against the back of his neck. John’s hand, huge hand, strong and insistent, on Alaric’s cock, is the only thing keeping him coherent.

“Just…” Alaric can barely think, let alone speak. “Just a little harder. Just a little faster,” he insists, slurring, and John throws one arm over Alaric’s shoulder, increasing the pressure, increasing the pace, until he starts to shudder.

Alaric follows, maybe two minutes later, coming in jets over John’s hand and his own stomach, and feels his body go slack.

“Jesus,” John says, long moments later. Draped over Alaric’s body like a rag doll.

Alaric tries to gather the momentum to say something back, but can’t, prostate thrumming like a bird, until, finally he calms.

They lie like that longer than they need to.

**

An hour later, Alaric is still wide awake, listening to John’s gentle snore. He should be fast asleep, sated and aching as he is. After all, he was dead, a few hours ago. A shock like that would wear most people out.

John’s back is probably scarred worse than even his chest and stomach are. Alaric resists the urge to explore the scars with his fingers, with his tongue.

Closes his eyes and wills sleep to come, but there is something missing.

When he realises what it is, Alaric groans to himself.

Digs his notebook out of his satchel, and pulls out the photograph. Notices, to his irritation, that it is getting scratched up, and rubs it against the bed sheets.

Props the photograph of Damon Salvatore against the bedside clock, and falls into an uneasy sleep.


	9. The signs are in the sound I hear

_Tillamook, OR_

When John wakes to find Alaric isn’t in the room, it’s like a gift from God. John doesn’t even shower, just hastily throws his things into his duffel. Yesterdays clothes. His toothbrush.

One rule. John has one rule. He doesn’t fuck other hunters, period. And Alaric Saltzman may be new to the game, but he counts as a hunter, after what he’s done in the last week.

John notices the photograph, on the nightstand, and pauses – knowing he shouldn’t waste the time – to look at it. Good looking guy, maybe twenty-five. Eyes so pale he could be a shapeshifter. His arms are crossed over his chest, and he’s glowering. Old boyfriend? A bit tacky, to put a photo of an old boyfriend on the nightstand, when you’ve… you know.

On the back of the photograph, he reads Damon Salvatore’s name, and understands. This is the vampire that killed Alaric’s wife. Well. Killed her, or worse. John has his suspicions about that, but whatever.

John quickly checks that he hasn’t missed anything, and heads out the door.

At the top of the stairs that lead down to the car park, John almost collides with Alaric, who is holding a cardboard tray with two coffees in one hand and a bag of what smells like bacon and egg sandwiches in the other. Alaric’s hair is a mess, and he’s looking pretty fucking pleased with himself, a lazy grin washing his features.

Until he sees John is carrying a bag, and makes a face like someone just shot his pet bunny.

“Seriously?” Alaric cocks his head to the side, incredulous. His shoulders drop, and he shakes his head. He looks disappointed, and resigned.

John feels like shit. Regards the toes of his shoes for a moment, musters the courage to meet Alaric’s eyes and shrugs. “It is what it is, kid.”

Alaric narrows his eyes, flinching at the nickname. “Fine. Want some breakfast before you go do whatever is so... urgent?”

Regrettable hook-ups followed by sneaking out in the morning should be a thing of the very distant past. He owes Alaric an awkward breakfast, at the very least. Nods, and takes the coffees.

John fumbles with the key and pushes the door open. Already, the room feels different. He casts guilty eyes over the bed, the scene of the crime (compounded by the fact he hasn’t made up the bed), and reminds himself to drink less in the future. Drops his duffel, puts the coffees down on the small dining table.

Alaric pulls a couple of plates out of the cupboard of the kitchenette, puts them by the coffee. His expression is unreadable.

“What?” John asks, but instantly regrets it. Stupid question. What.  He _knows_ what. Shouldn’t invite Alaric to comment. And yet.

“Just feelin’ a bit used, John,” Alaric says, pulling the bacon and egg sandwiches out onto the plates, pushing one across the table. “But whatever.”

John pours sugar into his coffee. Lots of sugar. Shrugs. “Be a bit more accurate to say we used each other, right? Don’t pretend this was gonna be anything more than it was.”

Alaric flinches as he bites into his sandwich. “I wasn’t gonna suggest looking for a house in the ’burbs. But I wasn’t expecting you to sneak out of the room like a twenty year old, either. So, like I said. Whatever.”

This is about to be the lamest thing John’s ever said. Says it anyway. “I have one rule, Saltzman. I don’t sleep with other hunters.”

Alaric rolls his eyes. Alaric is smart, smart enough to recognise this for the pathetic excuse it is. It’s not as if John had been anything less than enthusiastic the night before, after the temporary moment of clarity.

(And seriously? Had he really just tried to pull a walk of shame? He’s fifty-… something.)

“Well, you do like to keep reminding me I’m not a hunter, John,” Alaric says. Says it with something resembling affront. “And there was Mary, of course.”

John eats half a sandwich before it sinks in, what Alaric has said. He shakes his head. “Mary wasn’t a hunter. I didn’t get into the life until after she died.”

Alaric’s eyes snap to John’s. “Wasn’t she a Campbell?”

“Yeah. And?”

“The Campbells were hunters, right?”

John has the very strange sensation of all of his nerve endings rearranging themselves across his shoulders and neck. “I don’t know every hunter in America, Saltzman, but Campbell’s a common name. What are you getting at?”

Alaric flickers his eyebrows, taking another mouthful of his breakfast. He chews slowly. Swallows. “Coincidence, I guess. It’s just…” he shakes his head, doesn’t look up.

“What’s a coincidence?” John crosses his arms, elbows on the table. There’s an edge of menace in his voice, and Alaric responds to it. He’s instantly on alert. Which is actually good to see; it means he does have some self-preservation instincts. John hadn’t been convinced of this.

“Forget about it,” Alaric says, trying to defuse a bomb he’s already dropped. “Like you said. It’s a common name.” He looks as though he’s debating whether to take another mouthful of his sandwich, pretend this isn’t all going _horribly_ wrong, but he places it back on the plate.

John feels something like a snake, uncoiling in his chest. “Listen to me, kid. If you don’t spill, I’m gonna spill you.”

Alaric tenses further. “Just some research Isobel dug up, on hunters. There was a family, hunted for a couple of generations. I assumed Mary…” Alaric shakes his head. “There was a couple, Samuel and Deanna. They had a daughter called Mary. I thought since you called your kids Sam and Dean -”

Before he knows what he’s doing, John has pushed the table over. He grabs Alaric by his collar before the man can get to his feet, jerks him roughly. “What. The fuck. Are you talking about?”

“John…”

Alaric’s eyes are so wide that John can see white, all the way around. He’s split open with fear. John’s taller. Bigger. Stronger. Alaric’s not weak, though, tries to pull his collar from John’s hands, tries to pull away.

John won’t let him.

John wants Alaric to take it back. Because if Mary was a hunter… had ever been a hunter… then there was only one reason she would have given it up.

John’s never heard of a hunter who left the life. Ever. Not voluntarily. He’s got three friends in long-term psychiatric care. Four in jail. A whole lot more in graves, or cremated on pyres. But no one just leaves, not ever.

If Mary left the life, she left it for him. For the boys. And that is why he has Alaric Saltzman up against the wall, in a mockery of what they shared last night. Why his body is pulsing with adrenaline. Because if Mary left the life, and he dragged his boys back into it, then John…

He can’t even finish the thought.

John realises he has a hand around Alaric’s throat, but can’t bring himself to care. Alaric is struggling to get his legs underneath himself, scrabbling for something to hold onto. He looks like he’s even considering kissing John, just to try to distract him from the rage he’s riding, but he won’t do it.

“John… John, I can’t breathe,” Alaric begs, his voice barely a whisper. “Let me go.” His hands pull at John’s arms, trying to worm his way free. Tries to kick, but doesn’t have enough purchase, against the ground, or even the wall, to do much more than make contact.

John responds by punching him, hard, across the mouth. Alaric’s eyes blur, for just a second, and John feels irritation snap through his body like a white hot whip.

Alaric’s not a hunter, he’s barely a man. Won’t fight, will barely try. All he’s doing is trying to pry John’s fingers from his throat, scratching himself deeply in the process. Can’t fight for his life. Doesn’t know how to. John should do him a favour, cut his career short. Right now. Today.

John summons all the rage he can. “You know your wife’s not really _dead_ , right, Saltzman? That’s why she gave you that ring, instead of wearing it herself, while she went out looking for _vampires_.” John loosens his hand a little from Alaric’s throat. “She got herself turned. Probably did it right after she fucked the dude in that photo you’re carrying around.”

Alaric’s face falls, misery evident in every fleck of his blue grey eyes. So, he knows, he guessed. He’s trying to stay mired in denial, and he’s failing.

It’s something John is intimately familiar with. Denial. Only one way to eliminate all the doubt and fear and that’s by punching it down, punching it further, punching it until it can’t whisper in your ear any more. Punch it down until all you feel is the anger.

“Please,” Alaric slurs. “Please.”

That _noise_ has to stop.

And John punches him a second time, a third, relishing the _thwack_ of head against wall, the blood that is trickling in a thin stream from mouth and torn flesh. John changes tack and aims a vicious punch to the kidneys, eliciting a violent, full body twitch. When the body in John’s hands goes partially slack, John is supremely satisfied to see blood on the wall, behind his head, as well.

With the fourth punch to the face, there is the sickening crunch of a broken nose, and some weak breath escapes from the kid’s mouth. His eyes flutter shut, and after that, all that is holding him up is the pressure of John’s left arm against his chest.

And with that, the spell breaks, the haze of rage dissipates.

John hears a noise escape from his throat, and thinks it might be Alaric’s name. What has has in his hands – it’s not a _body_. It’s Alaric. A human being. Barely recognisable right now, but only hours ago, they were as close as two men can be.

Appalled at himself, John lets Alaric fall to the floor, and steps back. He can’t look at the crumpled body, bleeding from nose and mouth onto the worn-out carpet.

(What the fuck just happened?)

John finds himself sitting on the edge of the bed, and now he can’t help it; he watches Alaric like a hawk, praying the movements in his chest, the proof of life, will continue, and he remembers.

Samuel and Deanna were cautious. Hell, Samuel was downright suspicious of John, and everything John represented; the loss of his daughter, John had assumed at the time, but now he wonders if there wasn’t more to it.

And then unbidden, Mary’s charm bracelet flashes into his mind.

John covers his face with his hands. He hasn’t thought about it in years, but that bracelet… now, he remembers the symbols on it, and the whole thing makes a horrifying sort of sense.

(As he does this, John winces in pain himself. He’s split his knuckles open on Alaric’s teeth, needs stitches and antibiotics himself, but he can't think about himself right now, so he sets it aside.)

Alaric is stirring, trying to sit up, but when he does, he spits up a mouthful of blood, and sinks back to the floor. He makes a pained mewl deep in his throat. John feels the rage again, activating every scrap of muscle in his body, wants to kick into the body on the floor until it stops moving completely. And then he comes to his senses again.

Mary didn’t want her boys raised in the life.

Alternatively, Alaric is full of shit. Or there was another Samuel and Deanna Campbell with a daughter named Mary.

But no, John can’t do it. Can’t lie to himself.

So he does the only thing he _can_ do, whatever he can do to fix _this,_ now.

He crosses the room to where Alaric is just barely stirring again, and forces himself to catalogue the injuries; the eye that has swollen shut, bleeding heavily from a tear in the eyelid, and the other eye, red where it should be white. The split lip, where Alaric’s teeth tore through, and the broken nose, which needs to be reset. The swelling to Alaric’s jaw and the bruises which are already starting to blossom.

Horrifyingly, the very distinct mark of John’s hand over Alaric’s throat, each finger discernable, and the scratches Alaric made trying to pry those fingers away.

“I’ve got you,” he says. “Gonna make it easier for you to breathe.” Alaric’s throat must hurt, because his breath hitches.

John shifts Alaric’s body so he’s stretched out, pretending he can’t feel Alaric trying to twitch away from his hands. Avoiding contact with the eye that keeps fluttering open, and then closed again, wincing in pain and dilated in fear, wrestling with unconsciousness, terrified of what will happen if he falls asleep.

Alaric tries to speak, and it could be ‘leave me alone’ and it could be ‘son of a bitch’. And it could be something worse, something John actually deserves.

Gentle as he can manage it, John rolls Alaric on his side, the uninjured - well, less-injured side of his face on the ground, tips his chin back and to the side, to keep his airway open. Secures him by bending his leg out to the side. Alaric doesn’t resist.

(It’s at this point than John realises he’s shaking. Realises how close he came to doing something he could never have come back from.)

Alaric’s hand reaches, momentarily, towards John’s arm; not an expression of affection. He’s hurt and angry. _Why would you do this?_

John closes his eyes hard against the shame he feels. “I’ll call you an ambulance,” he says, voice barely a whisper. “I’m. Oh, fuck. I’m so sorry, kid,” he says, and uses Alaric’s cell phone to make the call.

After he gives them the address of the motel, the room number, he grabs his duffel, stalking out the door after pausing to make sure it will stay open for the paramedics.

John finds a dark corner of the car park, and he waits. He ties a long bandage around his hand, the rents in his flesh, and paces back and forth, wishing he could see what was happening, wishing he had the courage to stay inside, that he could be in there watching Alaric’s chest rise and fall.

When the paramedics arrive, they are able to get Alaric out of the room on his feet, instead of on a gurney, but only with considerable support. Alaric is wearing a cervical collar and has his arm thrown around the shoulders of a man about the same size as John, who is half-carrying him down the stairs.

Once they have Alaric secured in the ambulance and drive away, John returns to the room, packs all of Alaric’s things, and puts them into the Jeep. He’s about to close the door, leaving the key inside, when he realises he’s almost forgotten the photograph on the nightstand.

He stands for a long while, staring at it. Wonders if he would be doing Alaric a favour if he just threw it out right now, but knows this wouldn’t end the obsession.

He has no right to make decisions on anyone else’s behalf, not when he has been proven to be so catastrophically bad at making his own.

He tucks the photograph into Alaric’s duffel.

**

It is the work of several hours to do what John has to do. The first step is to find Alaric a motel close to the hospital and pay (with a stolen card, of course) for a room for a few nights. No way he’ll be hitting the road anytime soon, with one eye swollen shut and a head injury. John doesn’t enter the room, though; he secures Alaric’s belongings in the back of the jeep and returns to collect his own truck.

The hospital tells him Alaric will be kept overnight, unless he, John, is able to watch over him? John never hesitates; knows Alaric wouldn’t want that. Lies, and tells the nurse he’s interstate but will collect his ‘friend’ (the word burns his mouth) the following afternoon.

(And also, she wants to know, does John have any idea who was responsible for the beating? Could it have been an… intimate partner? The police have asked Mr Saltzman, but he seems reluctant to talk about it, claims he didn’t see.)

**

The following day, John stands outside the discharge area of the hospital, waiting and pacing. Around lunchtime, a huge orderly with a friendly face pushes Alaric, in a wheelchair, all the way out of the automatic doors. John takes a few hesitant steps forward, unsure if Alaric has even seen him.

“I’ll take it from here,” John says, with more confidence than he feels, and the orderly frowns. Sees the bandage on John’s hand, and narrows his eyes, ready to intervene.

“Ric? Buddy?” the orderly asks, without taking his eyes off John.

Alaric’s glare could turn a man to stone, but he nods. “Yeah. It’s fine.”

Although the swelling has decreased a little around his jaw, overall, Alaric looks worse than he had the day before. One stitch on the bow of his lower lip and three stitches in a line below it. One on the bridge of his nose and two over his left eye, which is still swollen shut, a glossy black. His nose has been reset, and is swollen almost flat.

“I’ll just...” John trails off, and Alaric nods, not meeting his eyes. John helps him onto a nearby seat, trying to avoid noticing Alaric clutch at his own side.

John collects his truck and collects Alaric a few minutes later. Alaric slips into the passenger seat without a word, still clutching at his side.

As they pull away, John speaks. “I got you a hotel room. It’s not far. It’s paid up for three nights.” John’s eyes flicker to Alaric’s face. “Your Jeep’s there,” he adds.

Alaric nods. “Appreciate it. Thanks.” John wants to say more, wants to ask if Alaric’s okay, if he can forgive him, if he wants John to stay. If he wants John to do anything. But there is a stone, somewhere in his throat, and the words can’t get around it.

He parks the truck at the motel, and hands Alaric the room key. Alaric shuffles to the door while John collects the duffel and knapsack from his Jeep.

When he gets to the room, Alaric is sitting on the bed. He looks smaller, and younger, and yes, also older than he had just a couple of days ago. Not in any way diminished. He’s learned a life lesson he could have done without. John places the bags on the ground, and stands leaning against the closed door for a long while.

This would be so much easier if Alaric would yell, or something.

At last, because the air is getting thicker and heavier by the moment, John speaks.

“Can I get you anything? Bring you some food?”

Alaric doesn’t look up, just shakes his head. There is still blood in the back of his hair, and the sight makes John feel ill.

“Alaric?” he says, soft, and at last Alaric looks up with his one good eye. He doesn’t look angry, though he must be. He doesn’t even look disappointed.

He looks, instead, immeasurably sad.

“I thought I was supposed to be careful of the monsters, John,” he says, resigned, voice nasal and scratched.

“I’m sorry,” John says.

Alaric nods. “Yeah. Me too.”

**

In the next few days, John Winchester drives nearly two thousand miles, with nothing in mind except the need to get as far away as possible from the place where he nearly killed a beautiful young man for the crime of telling him the truth.


	10. What they seek cannot be found in men

_Tillamook, OR – Durham NC_

Alaric fades in and out of consciousness, buoyed on a sea of pain killers and confused memories. At one stage he feels a strange tug on his eyelid and realises someone is stitching him up. For a horrible second, he thinks it might be John, and then he remembers that he’s in the hospital. The bed is warm and soft, the muted voices above him comforting, although he wishes he could make out less of what they’re saying.

 _“Pretty nasty beating.”_

 _“Could have been worse, they were worried about a kidney bleed. Can you pass some more gauze?”_

 _“He’s waking up.”_

He can’t tell if they are old or young, male or female. They are kind voices and soft hands.

“Mr Saltzman, if you can hear me, I’m going to have to put a couple of stitches in your lip, next. A couple have to be inside your mouth. I have to give you a local anaesthetic first. A few pinpricks around your mouth.”

Alaric nods. He thinks he nods. The cushion of pethidine makes it hard to be sure. He feels the sting at his lip. The thick, heavy feel of the anaesthetic seems to flush away the last of his mouth’s memories of John’s kisses.

“All done. Sutures next. If it hurts, move something, and I’ll give you another shot. Okay?”

Alaric grunts in agreement, and decides he likes nurses. Decides he’ll maybe go home and find a nice nurse to date. Changes his mind and decides he’ll never let anyone touch him again.

The worst thing is that Alaric can’t even work out if he deserved this or not. Imagines a stranger drifting into his life in a few years and casually referring the vampire Alaric used to be married to. Could he snap? If it was news? If it was a shock? Pound someone’s face into mincemeat?

(No, he couldn’t. But he might want to. Maybe there’s no real difference. Maybe it’s all about whether or not you’re familiar with violence and Alaric, for all that he’s killed eight vampires in under a week, is not a violent man. Yet.)

“That’s it for the stitches.” Alaric feels something small, plastic being pressed into his hand. “If you need anything, press the button. The doctor will come and see you soon. You can sleep, if you like.”

At last he’s left alone again, and Alaric tries to cut through the fog and make some sense of what’s happened. But nothing makes sense. Not the beating. Not the care John took with him afterwards. Distantly, Alaric wonders if it’s just something John does, but he doubts it.

It was the stuff about Mary.

In a family full of secrets, Alaric should have know better than to assume John knew, but then, why? Do hunters really believe no one outside their secret circle is paying attention to the things they do? Do they think there are no cell phone photographs of themselves, passed surreptitiously between those who want to know the truth about the big bad world around? No dossiers?

Should John have assumed he knew his wife any better than Alaric knew Isobel? Most painfully – Alaric thinks that maybe, if Mary had secrets, and Isobel had secrets, that should have made him and John kindred, in a way.

Exhausted, Alaric sleeps, but not for long.

“Mr Saltzman?”

The doctor is kind. She has kind eyes. The eyes are so kind Alaric thinks he might lose it completely, cry, or worse. He wishes it wasn’t such a small town. In city hospital emergency departments, no one ever meets your eye.

That would be preferable. Alaric is worried that if he lets so much as a tear fall, he’ll never stop.

“I’m Dr Ross, but call me Bev, okay?”

Alaric nods, just barely. “Ric.” It comes out ‘Rig’. He speaks like he has the worst head cold in history. He can feel his lips again, and wishes he couldn’t.

“Ric, then. So will I tell you the good news first?” Alaric nods. “The good news is that the swelling on your head is all on the outside of your skull. So next to no chance of serious problems there. Your eye is okay, just swollen shut. We’ll keep the ice packs coming. You also have two broken ribs.”

Alaric snorts. “’s good news?”

“They’re not badly broken. Just slightly fractured. Which brings me to the bad news, which I’m sure you suspected already. Your nose is broken. We have to reset it.”

“Great.” Alaric lets his eye drift closed.

“How badly does your throat hurt?”

Alaric tries to stay collected. Somehow, the choking was the worst of it; almost an intimate act, for John to have had his hand in the same place just ten or so hours before, and with such different intentions, turning Alaric’s face up to be kissed. Alaric feels his eyes prickle with tears. The one that is swollen shut burns.

Not sad. Ashamed.

“Bad,” he admits at last.

The doctor gives him an appraising look. Stands and pulls closed the privacy curtain.

“Intimate partner violence happens to men, too, Ric,” she says.

Alaric recoils. “Told you all. Didn’t know him.” It’s the longest sentence he’s said since arriving at the hospital.

“Not all your injuries are from this morning,” she continues. “And not all of your bruises are-”

Alaric winces. “’s not what it looks like.”

(He catalogues the last few weeks; thrown against a bathroom wall, with a knife to his throat, and wrestling vampires.  Of course, a clean slate when he woke from the dead yesterday, but then, he was immediately yanked out of a car and thrown to the ground, a machete held to his throat. And of course, he knows he is also covered in the sort of bruises that can only come from fairly rough sex, fingertips and hands on his hips and ribs and thighs, which will have been noted by the nurse who helped him out of his clothes and into a robe for the x-ray, so many hours ago.

Add to that a pretty vicious beating.

It is all so _humiliating_.)

Bev doesn’t push. She just nods. Probably, it’s a line she’s heard a thousand times before.

“So can I leave, once you’ve…?” Alaric gestures at his nose. “I have to get my stuff, and…” He really does sound pathetic, the swelling of his nose, the bruising to his throat. Trying to sound like he’s in better shape than he is, and he’s failing. Better to stick to one-syllable answers.

“Depends. Is there somewhere safe you can stay tonight? You can’t be on your own, with a head injury. If there’s no one you can stay with we’ll need to watch you here.” Alaric’s expression tells her all she needs to know. “I’ll have someone call your motel, if you like.”

Alaric nods, and returns his gaze to the ceiling.

Getting his nose re-set isn’t something he’d ever want to repeat, but afterwards, Alaric can breathe, and speak, a little better.

An orderly takes a shine to him; helps him sit up to eat, tells him someone went to his motel room and packed his stuff up for him. Comes back later to say a friend called John is coming to pick him up tomorrow. Driving in from interstate.

Alaric supposes that was sort of inevitable. Nods his thanks.

**

“I’ll take it from here.”

Alaric was fully expecting John to pick him up. He just wasn’t expecting to be so conflicted about seeing him.

The drive from the hospital to the motel is the second-most painful twenty minutes of Alaric’s life, after the time he found Damon Salvatore drinking from his wife’s neck. He feels every bump in the road in his broken ribs.

John doesn’t enjoy it much, either. The man can barely meet Alaric’s eyes. Well, eye. Alaric is full of pain killers, and although they barely take the edge off, they do give the world a pleasantly unreal feeling.

John is inscrutable, though that could be the drugs.

Once he’s in the motel room, Alaric’s not sure what he’s supposed to do. Ask for an explanation? Apologise for dropping a bombshell, The Truth About Mary? Offer up his research, and let John make of it what he will?

Alaric is about to speak, when John beats him to the punch.

“Can I get you anything? Bring you some food?”

For a second, Alaric considers asking him to stay, until someone more suitable can come and take care of him. Afraid of what he might say, Alaric doesn’t look up, just shakes his head.

“Alaric?” John says, soft. Alaric fixes him with his one good eye. John looks so calm.

“I thought I was supposed to be careful of the monsters, John,” Alaric says, in a voice he recognises as both condemning and disappointed.

“I’m sorry,” John says.

Alaric nods. “Yeah. Me too.”

With that, John disappears. Alaric isn’t sure whether to be relieved or even more afraid.

When he can get on his feet again, Alaric showers for a long time, finally washing the blood from his hair, scraping it from under his fingernails. He sleeps for several hours, on a cushion of pain killers, and wakes to find Isobel sitting cross legged at his side, stroking his hair.

“Hey, Is,” Alaric says, straining to see her through his one open eye. Isobel smiles sadly at him.

“My sweet man,” she says. “Look what he did to you.”

Alaric reaches both arms out, and Isobel lets herself be drawn down into them. She tucks her face into his chest, careful, Alaric notes, to avoid putting pressure on his broken ribs.

Very sweet, for a dream, or a hallucination, or whatever she is.

“Is he right, Isobel?” Alaric says at last, trying to decide if Isobel feels warm enough to be human. “Are you a vampire?”

“How should I know?” Isobel answers, after a long beat. “I’m in your head. What do you think?”

On waking, Alaric calls room service. All he can manage is soup and ice cream, and both make his stitched lip hurt, but he’s starving, so he manages. He turns the television on and flicks aimlessly through the channels that aren’t scrambled, but all he can find is Passions reruns and reality television, so he switches it off, and spends a long time curled in the arm chair, trying to decide what to do next.

Suddenly, he remembers the photograph of Damon Salvatore. Sorts through his duffel bag and knapsack until he finds it. He settles himself back into the armchair and studies the photograph.

John, Bobby, Dean. They’re all right. He’s not a hunter. He should give up right now.

But if he does, Damon Salvatore goes unpunished, and it feels as though revenge might be all Alaric has left. No. He won’t stop hunting. The day he meets Damon Salvatore he’ll be a different man, stronger. He’ll kill the vampire and make him feel it.

Alaric lets his good eye drift closed, and wishes he had a warm body to curl into.

There are a significant number of problems in Alaric’s life right now and he’s not sure which one tops the list. He’s injured. He’s alone. He’s three thousand miles from home, with his Jeep, and he can’t see to drive.

No one who gives a crap about him knows where he is.

His wife is probably a vampire.

His cell phone chirps, and he looks at the display. Sighs, and answers it.

“Hey, Bobby.” His voice still sounds weak and nasal, though better even than it was earlier in the day. The swelling is slowly going down.

“Saltzman.” Bobby sounds close to speechless, but he wouldn’t have dialled Alaric’s number if he wasn’t expecting an answer. Which means that probably, John had called Bobby to tell him Alaric was dead - and then again, to say he wasn’t. Alaric wonders what else he told him and figures probably nothing at all. “Rumours of your death…?”

“Yeah. Exaggerated. Or... revised.”

Bobby’s silent, taking it in. “You still sound like horsecrap, kid. Course, that’s better’n dead.”

“I’m fine.” Bobby can hear the lie in his voice, but he’s not going to push. Alaric debates, for a second, asking for help, but knows he won’t. Doesn’t want anyone connected to John to know what a sorry state he’s in right now. So he keeps it simple. “’m heading home for a bit, Bobby. But I’m stayin’ in the game. Cool if I stay in touch?” He can feel his throat close over the words, but chokes them out.

Bobby promises to call if he hears about anything happening on the east coast that Alaric can help with, and they say a goodbye for now.

Alaric lies on his back, staring at his phone, for a long time. Scrolls through his contacts, but there’s really only one person he can call, and so he does. He takes a deep breath, swallows a little more water and hits the ‘call’ button. Ben picks up on the second ring, sounding furious.

“Seriously, Saltzman? It’s been nearly four weeks! You ignore my -”

“Ben,” Alaric says, interrupting. Ben makes a disgusted sound in his throat. “I’m in trouble, Ben. You gotta get on a plane.”

You need a friend or two in your life who, when you tell them that, they will, literally, book a ticket for the next flight out. By 7 p.m. the next day, Ben has arrived by bus from Portland after a nine-hour flight across four time zones, and Alaric’s heart turns over in his chest when he hears the knock on the motel room door.

Ben looks like he’s getting ready to tear shreds from him, when Alaric first opens the door. Ben gives an involuntary moan once he realises what he’s seeing, once he takes stock of the injuries, the stitches, the eye swollen shut. The broken nose. Steps into the room, and nods. “You want to talk about it?” Can’t help but cringe at the handprint and scratches on Alaric’s throat.

Alaric shakes his head, and Ben never insists. He does, however, enfold Alaric in the gentlest – and most needed – embrace he’s had in his adult life.

**

It takes them almost two weeks to drive back to Durham but they’re in no rush. Alaric gets slowly better, though there are days he shakes for hours and can’t say why. Alaric and Ben get drunk a few times. Sometimes in celebration of life and a re-enactment of their dumbest years. Sometimes because Alaric’s grief, compounded now, needs balm.

Sometimes they laugh all day. Once, they see a really big ball of twine (in Cawker City, Kansas; it’s not the world’s biggest, but it’s still sort of impressive). Some days, Alaric barely speaks, and he’s grateful for Ben’s answering silence.

One night, only two days before they expect to finish up in Durham, Alaric and Ben are sharing a bed in a hotel in Louisville, Kentucky. Nothing has happened between them; Alaric has been shaking all day, and Ben just wants to be close. Alaric opens his eyes, and Isobel is sitting by the bed, in the chair she always used to read in, in their sunny apartment in Durham.

Alaric doesn’t smile. Neither does Isobel, though after a time, she quirks her lip a little. “Hi,” she says.

Alaric stares at her for long moments, through eyes that are bright and wide and see clearer than they ever have before. “You gotta go, Is. I gotta get on with my life.”

Isobel drops her long eyelashes and nods, just barely. “Goodbye, Alaric.”

“Goodbye, Isobel.”

Alaric expects to feel a fresh wave of grief, when Isobel disappears; but he just feels relief.

In the bed beside him, Alaric feels Ben stir, and it makes him smile; the living are better company. He wraps himself around his friend and sleeps better than he has in weeks.

**

Alaric has been back in Durham three months, and back at work for nearly as long, when Bobby calls. Alaric has never been so strong or so fit. He’s tried a couple of different martial arts, but ultimately prefers boxing. Boxes twice a week and runs most days. Even wins a few matches.

(Isobel, he suspects, would barely recognise him. So much of who he was has been carved away, but he’s been building, too.)

Now, Alaric is prepared to fight back, if something – or someone – tries to hurt him, and he supposes, in a way, he has John to thank for that.

Alaric has refined his weapons. The stake launcher weighs a little over half of what it used to and sits solely on his wrist, making it far less cumbersome, and the crossbow (in the end Alaric went back to using a regular bow, instead of the air cartridges) is accurate from almost two hundred feet.

So when Bobby calls to tip Alaric off about vampires in Lynchburg, it’s not a difficult weekend’s work, and it feels good to be back in it.

It is after this that Alaric glues the photograph of Damon Salvatore into the back of his notebook, instead of sleeping with it by his bed each night.

**

It’s less than three months later that Alaric receives a call from Sam Winchester. No preliminaries. “What happened between you and our dad?”

“Why?” Alaric has to fight a small wave of panic. “What did he say?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. But he’s been on some sort of suicide mission ever since the week the two of you ended up hunting together.”

Alaric finds himself touching his bottom lip, with the pad of his index finger, feeling for the slightly thick ridges of scar tissue there. “Nothing happened.”

Sam makes some sound of disbelief. “Did you…?”

“I didn’t say a word.” Alaric shakes his head. Got the shit beaten out of him for spilling the beans about Mary. John probably would have killed him if he’d said anything about Sam and Dean.

“You still hunting?” The relief in Sam’s voice is almost laughable.

“A bit.” Alaric crosses and uncrosses his arms. “You guys ever need help around North Carolina, or if you’re passin’ through, call me. Look, I gotta go.”

“Nice talking to you, Ric.”

**

Over the next year, Alaric does a little part-time hunting, meets a few more players. Retains an unhealthy degree of interest in the happenings in Mystic Falls, because the one thing he’s come to believe is that he’s not going to find Damon Salvatore the way he’s found so many others. The second he hears about animal attacks in Mystic Falls he’ll pack his life and move there. He'll stay as long as it takes to learn the truth about Isobel, and then Damon Salvatore is a dead man.

Well. Dead-er.

Sam calls him again, out of the blue one day.

“You ever hunt with Jeffrey Grant?”

“Out of Raleigh? Yeah, why?”

“He’s dead. Funeral’s Thursday.”

Jeffrey Grant should have burned on a pyre, in the forest or on a beach somewhere but the thing that got him, got him at home. Got him, got his pretty wife, too. Alaric’s heart sinks.

Sam continues. “So... dad said to tell you specifically that he _won’t_ be there.”

Alaric’s heart beats a little harder in his chest. “Right.”

“Man… what happened? Seriously?”

Alaric shakes his head. “Nothing. Seriously.”

“See, now…” Sam’s trying not to sound pissed, and Alaric wonders what John’s been up to that is so out of character. “I’m having trouble believing that.”

Alaric sighs. “Did you ask John what happened?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“He says nothing happened. Which makes you both liars.”

“Believe what you want. I’ll see you on Thursday.”

Alaric goes to the funeral, and true to his word, John does not. Afterwards, Alaric, Sam and Dean head off to find a bar within stumbling distance of the motel they’re all staying in.

Dean’s a lot more mellow with Alaric than he was the first time around. Catches him in a head-lock and musses his hair. “Proper hunter, now, Ricky-boy. Scars on your face and everything.” Alaric doesn’t tell him he got them all in the same place.

“Thanks for the validation, Dean.” With a quick turn of his hips and a well placed arm across Dean’s waist, he throws Dean to the ground in the car park outside the bar, and Sam hoots with amusement. Dean lies for a moment, laughing and recovering on the ground, until Alaric helps him up. “And that’s for calling me Ricky-boy.”

“I see how you earned your rep,” Dean groans, letting himself be helped to his feet.

Alaric tosses an eyebrow in the air. “Unfortunately for my ‘rep’ I’m also building an impressive academic track record.”

Sam looks sort of jealous.

They drink too much and tell stories.

At the end of the night, they’re heading for separate motel rooms when Sam says “I’m gonna ask you one more time, Ric. You and dad. What happened?” Behind his brother, Dean watches Alaric’s face for anything that will give him away.

Alaric grins lazily. He’s actually prepared for this, and knows his face will betray nothing. “Your dad ends up pissing off every hunter he works with, Sam. What do you reckon happened?”

Sam holds his gaze, apparently waiting to see if he’ll hear anything else. Decides he won’t, shakes Alaric’s hand and bids him good night.

**

It’s less than three months later that Alaric is preparing to clear out a nest of vampires in Jacksonville (North Carolina, not Florida – there’s a surprising amount of hunting to be done close to home, and Alaric can do without the big road trips these days). It’s close to high noon when Alaric approaches the home base he’s identified. The whole thing is dodgy as hell – this is a nice house, with reasonably close neighbours. Neighbours who have phones and will no doubt call the police if they think something’s hinky.

It all has to go down clean, and quiet.

Alaric sits by the tree line, planning his next move, when he feels a hand on his shoulder. He swings, ready to stake, but pulls back just in time.

John Winchester.

“What are you doing here, Saltzman?” he asks, barely above a whisper, a low note of panic in his voice. “You’ll get yourself killed.”

Alaric gives John a withering look, and flashes his ring. And then he registers what he’s really seeing.

John looks older – not a couple of years older. More like ten. Greyer. He has a new scar running from his forehead, across an eye that looks half blind, and down his cheek. Alaric has to swallow his surprise, and the flash of concern he feels.

So this is what Sam meant by suicide missions. John’s gotten reckless.

John takes in the slight bump on Alaric’s nose, the scars on his face, but says nothing. Makes a beckoning motion, and Alaric follows him a few yards away.

“Can I convince you to leave?” John asks.

Alaric scowls. “Are you kidding me? No. You know my reputation.” And it’s a good reputation. Like Elkins before him, Alaric hunts vampires exclusively – though he stumbled on a werewolf, once, and was grateful he at least knew how to kill it.

John shakes his head, irritated. “Fine. Then here’s the plan.”

John has the blueprint for the house. They stalk through the lower floor, easily decapitating the sleeping guard – serves him right for nodding off – and then move from room to room upstairs, quiet as mice, staking and cutting off heads.

“Is that all of them?” Alaric asks. “I wasn’t sure about the numbers.”

John gives him a disgusted look. “Thought you’d have learned your lesson about that.”

“Don’t give me any shit, John. Seriously.”

John gives Alaric an appraising look. He looks ready to say something regrettable, but bites it back, heading down the stairs.

Downstairs from the kitchen, there’s a basement. They’re expecting to find that it’s a larder for hot and cold running blood but there’s no one down there; no one still alive, anyway. They do one last sweep of the house.

In the living room, Alaric pulls his phone out of his pocket, ostensibly to check the time. “If I hit the road now I can be home before nightfall. Goodbye, John.”

“Saltzman. Wait.” John grabs Alaric’s arm, but doesn’t seem to know what to say next. There’s a long, awkward pause  “You look good. Strong.”

Alaric nods. It’s not meant as a compliment. It’s a statement of fact. They’d be evenly matched, now. Alaric might even have the upper hand. Alaric meets John’s gaze steadily, and it seems to unnerve the legendary old hunter somewhat.

John scratches at his beard. “Let’s just go get a drink. Catch up.”

Alaric pauses, and after a moment, gently pulls his arm out of John’s grip. He continues to hold John’s gaze until John flushes and looks away. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, John,” Alaric says. Not unkindly.

Alaric realises, then, how far he’s come from the man he was then, to the man he is now. Standing his ground. Before he’d met John, he’d built him up in his mind to be some mythic hero; and it turned out that he was a man, nothing more, nothing less.

John puts his hands in his pockets, as if he can’t think of anything else he can do with them. Seems to be searching for the right thing to say. “Listen, Saltz- _Ric_. What I did…”

Alaric waits.

At last, John meets his eyes again, and beneath the new scars, the deepening lines in his face, Alaric sees the man he remembers; the eyelashes, the tired eyes. The strength, though Alaric knows, now, that everyone can be broken. Perhaps he’s not so quick to laugh as he once was, but perhaps he doesn’t often get something to laugh about.

“Can you forgive me?”

Alaric knows John is capable of saying he’s sorry, but the way he asks this question, he’s not sure John’s asked for forgiveness too many times in his life.

“I forgave you a long time ago, John,” he answers, with a soft smile, because this is the absolute truth. “Doesn’t mean I wanna be friends.”

John nods. “Fair,” he says. He looks as if he wants to say something else, but he doesn’t; so they shake hands, and part ways.

**

It isn’t long after this that Alaric hears that there have been animal attacks in Mystic Falls, and that the high school’s only history teacher was among the first victims.

 


	11. The promise is a victory

_Mystic Falls, VA_

Alaric arrives in Mystic Falls to a grateful, if incredulous, welcome by the school; why an Associate Professor in American History from Duke would take a job as a high school history teacher is beyond them. Alaric knows enough about the town to say the right things.

“It’s a great opportunity for me. To learn about the town, especially the founding families. There are some great stories here. For a historian, it’s like Disneyland.” Trademark easy grin, and he’s won them over.

This earns him a round of dinner invitations from various gnarled branches of the aforementioned (deeply incestuous) founding family shrub, some of which he even accepts.

(He’s watching every face for skin that’s a touch too pale, anyone who flinches under the heat of the sun. Any trace of a jaw that cants wrong. And he carries vervain with him everywhere he goes.)

The plan is so simple. Alaric has killed vampires. He no longer knows how many. He knows how to do it. But Damon Salvatore has him off balance from the first time they meet.

(Because vampires are smelly, badly dressed monsters who bed down in abandoned hunting cabins. They don’t have hair that looks soft and eyes like spun silver. They don’t smell like bergamot and szechuan pepper and wood smoke. They don’t volunteer to chaperone high school dances because they’re worried about their human friends.

They also generally don’t kill other vampires.)

Still, at the second meeting, the one which is supposed to end with Damon dead, Alaric learns the truth about Isobel; she is, indeed, a vampire. And she did, indeed, ask – no, _beg_ – to be turned. And Damon did, indeed, sleep with her before he turned her. The vampire delivers all three pieces of news with a heady blend of malice and glee in his voice, before staking Alaric in the lung and leaving him to die in front of the fireplace.

The third time they meet, it is Damon who is off balance, because usually, when Damon kills someone, they stay that way. Damon’s eyes linger on Alaric’s lips longer than is strictly polite.

(Alaric fights the urge to tell Damon he’s not the first vampire to have killed him, and doubts he’ll be the last.)

The fourth time they meet, Damon needs help to save his sainted younger brother Stefan, and Alaric agrees; saves Damon’s life, in fact, and he’s not sure why, only that it seems like the right thing to do, at the time.

Hours later, at the local bar/restaurant/everything – cleverly named the “Mystic Grill” – Damon christens the two of them Team Badass, and Alaric responds by punching him in the jaw. He then drags Damon around the back of the restaurant and into an alley, where they kiss for the first time, where Damon takes Alaric’s cock deep into his throat, keeping his fangs carefully sheathed, and Alaric feels safer than he should, at the mercy of a violent predator.

Afterwards, Damon wipes a stray drip of come from his chin and smiles.

“So…” he starts. “Sorry about killing you before. That was kind of a dick move.”

Alaric isn’t sure if he feels lost, or found.

(He pictures John Winchester, whose eyes would flash, who would tell Alaric that “monsters are monsters” – and Alaric wouldn’t even be able to argue, because Damon himself certainly wouldn’t.)

The next few months are, to say the least, confusing.

**

Usually, it happens when there has been some battle. Some vampire with no sense of territory, or a werewolf dumb enough to pick a fight on a night when the moon isn’t full. The circumstances change, but the results are the same; riding the adrenaline, they end up at the Salvatore boarding house (though why it’s still known that way, Alaric doesn’t know – certainly, there are no boarders), tearing at each other’s clothes.

Usually, it happens in Damon’s huge bedroom, in his ostentatiously oversized bed, but there is always a chance they won’t make it up the stairs, and Alaric has bent Damon over the elegant chaise lounge in the library, more than once. Once they barely make it inside, and Damon fucks Alaric halfway into the wall, right there by the front door, with Alaric’s legs wrapped around his hips like a prom queen, semi-conscious with lust.

In between these adventures, they snark at each other. Alaric isn’t sure who is more disconcerted by their arrangement: the vampire or the hunter. Certainly, neither had been looking for it, and they agreed it wasn’t healthy.

“I think Dr Phil would call you self-destructive,” Damon observes one night, lying on his back, sated and lazy in the bright moonlight, with Alaric’s sweat cooling on his skin.

“I think Dr Phil would call you a mass-murdering psychopath,” Alaric counters.

“He’d be right. Which proves my point.” Damon grins viciously.

Alaric dresses and goes home.

And then it’s just because they’re drunk. Alaric drinks at the boarding house because whenever he goes to the Mystic Grill he gets wheedled for information about the book he’s trying to write, what he might be writing about the different founders (you know the Fells are the oldest family, right? This _used_ to be Fell’s Church), and frankly, he prefers to drink in front of the fireplace with Damon. The honey taste of bourbon on Damon’s mouth still makes Alaric think of John, though less as time goes by.

Stefan’s girlfriend, Elena Gilbert, who inspires an extraordinary degree of protectiveness in everyone she meets (lucky, since half the supernatural world is gunning for her, or so it seems) is a student in Alaric’s fourth-period history class. She takes Alaric aside one day at school. She has a fondness for Damon and may be the only person in Mystic Falls other than Alaric who can recognise him as a mass-murdering psychopath and still consider him someone who you might call a friend.

“Damon’s trying to be a better person than he has been. I know you guys are just... allies, or whatever, when there’s something after us. But...” She trails off, like she doesn’t know what she’s really asking. “Could you maybe be nice to him? He doesn’t really have a lot of friends.” As she says it, Alaric flashes back to a scene the night before, when Damon was lying naked and boneless on the feather duvet, quivering like a bird; Alaric had one hand on Damon’s cock and his tongue in his ass.

“I’ll try,” Alaric agrees, and tries not to blush.

And then it starts happening because it’s a Thursday, or because neither has anything better to do.

**

It’s still not a ‘thing’, even if they do snark less. It’s not a thing until there’s been dating, or something, right? Dinner and drinks? So, okay, they do a lot of that. A movie, then (and that only happened the one time, and it was, to be fair, a very manly film, very violent, not something you’d see on a date; and besides, Damon had been begging Alaric to go with him for over a week, and it had been getting annoying).

It’s not a ‘thing’ until there’s been sleeping over.

Alaric never sleeps at the boarding house. One night he’s been lying in a post-coital haze on Damon’s bed for longer than he thinks he should, when he rouses himself to leave. Gives Damon a half-smile and sits up, to climb off the bed and collect his clothes.

Damon groans. “I’m starting to feel like a whore, Ric,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “A whore who, by the way, is owed a huge tab, right about now.”

“You’ll get over it.” Alaric grins, sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling up his boxers.

“It’s almost as if you don’t like me.” Damon is stretched out, his long, lean, pale form almost silver in the white light afforded by the soft lamp. Beautiful.

Alaric stands, steps into his pants, and chuckles. “That’s because I _don’t_ like you.”

For less than a second, Damon looks hurt; then incredulous, and then he settles back to a smirk. “Of course you do, Ric.”

At this, Alaric laughs. “Fine,” he says. “Maybe I make it a policy not to fall asleep in front of anyone I think might kill me.” As he says this, his hand flutters automatically to the scar over his eye.

He sits down again, to pull on his socks, and in a moment, Damon nestles in behind him, wrapping his legs around Alaric’s hips, slipping one hand around his chest, the other over his shoulder. He tucks his chin up onto Alaric’s other shoulder and kisses his jaw, just rubs his lips across it softly.

“Stay,” he says. “Stay.”

It’s a little like falling into a maze of mirrors, but Alaric finds himself leaning back against Damon’s slightly cool body. “What am I doing?” he asks, not sure whether the question is directed at himself or Damon.

“I think humans call it ‘trust’,” Damon answers, barely more than a whisper, and it is such a tender moment that Alaric feels his heart clench in panic. But Damon can be relied upon to ruin any such moment. “Besides, why would I kill you? You’re much more posable alive,” he says, and Alaric feels the world right itself again.

Alaric stays, and sleeps rather better than he ought to.

When he wakes in the morning, Damon is draped over him like a cat, and their legs are tangled, and Damon rewards his trust with a slow, luxurious hand job and a breakfast of bacon and eggs.

Okay, it’s _definitely_ not a thing until you get to the point where kissing doesn’t _always_ lead to sex.

Damon has never been to Alaric’s loft. It would mean punching through a wall of denial a foot thick for Alaric to ask him. So the day Damon shows up and knocks, Alaric stands at the door gaping at him for a long beat.

“Damon?” he asks at last.

“The one and only,” Damon smirks back. “You going to invite me in?” He has his foot pointedly resting against the invisible barrier that keeps vampires out of homes they’re not invited into.

At last, Alaric takes a step back. “Come in, Damon,” he says, unable to believe he’s saying it.

Damon’s smirk flickers for a moment, as if he’s surprised; and then it grows to a satisfied grin, and he steps into the loft. “Cool,” he says, eyes darting everywhere. “Though I thought you’d have more books.”

Damon touches everything, it’s what he does. Elegant hands, fingers that splay slightly before tapering at the tips, they flutter over everything. He opens books and boxes and drawers like he’s trying to find the answer to a question he doesn’t know how to ask. Alaric watches, standing by the door as if this is all a hallucination, as if he hasn’t just invited a predator into his home. From time to time, Damon comments on something; a book he hasn’t read, a photograph, the geode Alaric has owned since he was a kid.

Damon stands at the windowsill, notices a photograph of Isobel sitting in a brightly lit garden somewhere. This, he doesn’t touch. Instead he speaks. “You came to Mystic Falls to kill me.” It’s not a question.

“Yeah,” Alaric agrees, because there is no point in trying to rewrite their history.

Damon continues to stare at the photograph. “I just forget, sometimes.”

(Alaric does, too.)

Damon steps away from the photograph. He’s done a lap of the whole loft, and stops in front of Alaric, their faces just inches apart.

Alaric takes a breath, searches for something to say. He parts his lips, just slightly, and Damon leans in for a soft kiss; pausing for a moment to narrow his eyes just as their noses graze, before their lips meet, as if he’s not sure what sort of response he’ll get. Alaric feels his eyes grow heavy, and he kisses Damon back.

Damon steps away, just a notch; he never actually leaves anyone’s personal space unless he _wants_ to. Studies Alaric for a moment, and then smirks again.

When Alaric realises Damon’s not trying to get him naked, he has to comment. “What was that about?”

Damon shrugs. “Just wanted to see what would happen. Want to go find some trouble to get into? I heard there’s a nest of vampires in Charlottesville. C’mon, Ric. Road trip. Big fight. Awesome foreplay.” Says this hooking a finger into one of the loops in Alaric’s belt, with a sly smile on his face.

(The memory of John crashing him into a wall, bruising his lips in a kiss, occasionally threatens to knock Alaric off his feet. But things are different with Damon. They go out and fight monsters and then Damon spends hours kissing, licking, and kneading the sore spots out of Alaric’s bruised body.)

“Or we could just hang out,” Damon adds, fondly, chin cocked to the side.

Okay, so maybe it’s a ‘thing’.

**

Alaric wakes one morning to find Damon studying him from three inches away. This should faze him but it’s a remarkably common occurrence. Damon doesn’t need to sleep, just does it when he feels like it, and for some reason, he likes to watch Alaric breathe. Puts a hand on Alaric’s chest to feel the rise and fall.

“Morning,” Alaric says, stretching.

“When did you break your nose?” Damon places an elegant forefinger over the white scar which sits just above the break, where Alaric wore a stitch for a week.

Alaric freezes. “Long time ago.” It feels like a lie, though it’s been more than three years. He turns, pulls Damon into his arms, trying to deflect the question by kissing him silent. They’re in Alaric’s loft, and a sunbeam is hitting them just right, and Damon feels uncharacteristically warm under Alaric’s big hands.

“Who did it?” Damon asks. “Want me to kill him?”

Alaric doesn’t want to think about John Winchester.

“Shut up,” Alaric says, rolling away. “I don’t pick on your flaws.”

“I don’t have any flaws.” Damon frowns. “Not physical ones, anyway. And I never said it was a flaw,” Damon says, considering. “I think it makes you look badass.” Alaric pretends not to notice as Damon’s eyes flicker to his other scars, all the same age to the day. He looks as if he wants to ask where they all came from, and for a second, the expression on his face matches perfectly the one in the photo Alaric carried around for all those months.

Angry and protective. So that’s what it was.

“Now you’re making a weird face, Ric. Stop it. Want a blow job? Stupid question,” he says, as he starts to kiss his way south.

**

Alaric has just turned off the shower one morning when he hears his phone ring. “Don’t answer that,” he calls. It’s a new thing Damon has. Answering Alaric’s phone. It seems to amuse him, though Alaric can’t think why.

Damon is sitting on the couch. “Who’s Ben Alder?” he calls, before picking up the phone.

Alaric grabs a towel, hastily wrapping it around his hips and making a mad dash, just in time to hear Damon say into the phone, “this is his _boyfriend_. Who are _you_?”

Alaric snatches the phone away, and it occurs to him that maybe this is why Damon likes to answer the phone, for the snatching part. It wouldn’t surprise him. “Stop calling yourself that,” he says, gritting his teeth, and speaks into the phone. Damon smiles, lazy and pleased with himself.

“Ben. Hey, man.” Alaric glares at Damon, who has his hands behind his head and one foot up on the coffee table, and makes a very irritating kiss face before smirking again.

“Boyfriend? Seriously, Saltzman?” Ben sounds half-amused, half-disappointed. “We talk once a week and you haven’t said a word.”

“I never called him that,” Alaric says, knowing Damon can hear both sides of the conversation. Damon pretends to pout, and Alaric retreats to the false privacy afforded by the folded screen that makes an artificial bedroom.

Ben plans to visit Mystic Falls in less than two weeks. Alaric hangs up the phone and lies on his back on the bed, counting the ways this can go wrong and wondering why he hadn’t tried to talk Ben out of it, promised to meet him in Richmond or something.

“I’ve been looking forward to meeting your old friends, Ric.”

Alaric sits up sharply. “No. No way. You’re staying clear.”

“Why?” Damon looks genuinely baffled, face quirking.

“Because you eat people, Damon. Ben’s my best friend. I wouldn’t have -”

“I haven’t eaten anyone in ages. And I thought _I_ was your best friend. And why does he call you Saltzman?”

Alaric groans. “I don’t know. Lots of people call me Saltzman.”

Damon considers this a moment, leaning against the crumbling wall, giving Alaric an appraising look. “No. I’m sticking with ‘Ric.’ Ric?”

Alaric shoots him a doleful look.

“If I promise not to eat your second-best friend, can I meet him when he comes?”

It’s not like Alaric could stop him.

**

“So, tell me, Ben, are all historians tall? I mean, Ric’s tall. You’re _really_ tall. Is it a requirement?”

Ben blinks. Ben’s been blinking rather a lot. He doesn’t know what to make of Damon. He’s also opened and closed his mouth quite a few times, but overall, he looks utterly amused, a quirk permanently etched into his lip. Damon and his charms.

“No. We were both hired on an affirmative action kick. You know. Filling the quota. Lots of short women in the department.”

Damon likes to pick tidbits off Alaric’s plate. Alaric found it rude, in the beginning, and as the months went by, just a little annoying, and now it’s sort of… endearing. Which doesn’t mean he’s entirely comfortable with Damon picking food off _Ben’s_ plate. Damon looks at Alaric out of the corner of his eye.

“This isn’t bothering you, is it, Ben?” Damon asks, eyebrows in the air, lowering a crispy piece of bacon into his mouth.

Ben seems to have decided the best way to handle this distinctly odd style of conversation is just to play along. Alaric groans, rubs his temples with the heels of his hands, and nicknames his stress headache ‘Damon.’ Drinks half a glass of wine in one mouthful.

“Not at all. Go ahead.” Ben grins, and it’s a normal, old-fashioned Ben grin.

Alaric suspects – not suspects, has deduced – that some time in the last few weeks, his old friends have gotten together to discuss Alaric’s mental health and vote to see who gets to check on him. The return of the normal, old-fashioned Ben grin suggests he’s decided Mystic Falls is treating Alaric fine, and they don’t need to worry so much.

“So what do you do for a living, Damon?” asks Ben, polite and interested.

Damon smirks. “Call me independently wealthy.”

“Must be nice.”

“It will be, once I convince Ric to quit his job and spend all day every day pandering to my whims.”

Alaric puts his head in his hands. “Damon?” he says. “Play nice.”

“He is playing nice,” Ben argues. “I wouldn’t mind being a kept man.”

“See, Ric? I _am_ playing nice.”

At the pool tables, the delinquent population of Mystic Falls are pretending not to watch the proceedings with interest. There are always strangers in town, but strangers who aren’t in town to kill them all provoke a different kind of interest. And besides, Alaric has become aware in recent months that there has been speculation about his relationship with Damon.

Young and dumb as they are, they are his friends, and Alaric is looking forward to the day none of them are his students any more.

Sensing Alaric wants some time alone with Ben, Damon wanders off to play pool with Elena and her friends.

“I like him,” Ben says. “He’s odd. But hot. Like, _hot_. And… charming, or something.”

Alaric wants to tell Ben that Damon also has excellent hearing, but he settles for changing the subject. “Yeah, well, he’s also a pain in the ass.”

Damon is leaning across Elena’s back, helping her to line up a tricky shot. Ben narrows his eyes. “Is he flirting with a teenaged girl over there?”

“If it moves, Damon will flirt with it.” Alaric resists the urge to smile, or to look up. “He’s the reason people leash their dogs in this town.”

(It’s a game. Deciding what to say, when you know he can always hear.)

Ben holds his eyes for a long time. “My God, Saltzman. You’re actually in _love_ with him.”

There’s a loud clatter from the pool table. Damon has jumped a shot, and two balls have hit the slate floor. Alaric does his best not to look up, but Ben startles.

After a moment, he takes a couple of mouthfuls of beer, and rests his elbows on the table. “You’re really alright, aren’t you.”

Alaric nods. “I’m alright.”

“Ever since that disastrous road trip of yours…”

Alaric registers a flash of panic. “Can we maybe not -”

“No one’s listening, Saltzman. Ever since that trip, you’ve always been…hard. Defensive and pissed off, like you thought someone was gonna come along and… hurt you like that again.”

No, no, no. “Seriously, Ben… maybe another time…”

“I don’t know what happened to you, but I know it was bad.”

“Ben. Shut up.” Ben looks around the room, making a point and yes, it looks like no one is paying any attention. Alaric knows better. “I really don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Fine. Fine. All I’m saying… you look secure, here. You look like you feel safe and I wasn’t sure I was gonna see that again. You’ve got friends, you’ve got a life. It’s what Isobel would have wanted. So I get to report back that we don’t need to kidnap you and drag you back to Duke.” Ben shrugs, a little sadly. “You know where we are, though.”

At that, Damon lands with a thump in the booth alongside Alaric and fixes him with a stare. His eyes flicker across the scars on Alaric’s nose, above his eye, and beneath his lip, and Alaric tries not to flinch under his gaze.

“I’m gonna go see if I can get in on the next game,” Ben says, slapping his hands on the table.

When he’s gone, Damon nudges Alaric’s arm. “You going to tell me what that was about?” There’s not a hint of snark, and Damon’s not smiling.

“Nope.” Alaric gives a half smile.

Damon nods, tangles his fingers together with Alaric’s under the table. “You know if anyone tried to hurt you now, I’d kill them, right?”

Alaric gives a tired smile. “I do now,” he says.

And then right there, in front of God, Ben, Stefan, Elena and the rest of Mystic Falls, Damon Salvatore kisses Alaric Saltzman, right on the lips, like they’re completely alone in the world.

And Alaric kisses him back.

 

 

 


	12. New situation if our direction's true

_Mystic Falls, VA_

Damon stands by the fireplace, a glass of bourbon in his hand, swirling the drink slowly. The blood bag diet makes the cravings worse, but it’s worth it to keep Alaric around. Of course, more cravings means more booze to keep the cravings in check and damned if he isn’t becoming a _total_ lush.

The blood bag diet is… tolerable. He’s not interested in even trying animal blood, _eugh_ , fur in your teeth, he doesn’t know how Stefan can stand it. But the bagged stuff _is_ tolerable, so long as Alaric keeps giving him those heady little tastes of himself and besides, Damon knows very well that if he starts snacking on the townsfolk, Alaric will make that holier-than-thou expression and then leave him. Possibly for good.

Damon quite likes that expression, but Alaric leaving him would be… unacceptable.

Alaric is upstairs taking a very long shower, and Damon is fighting the temptation to go up and join him. But Alaric suggested a day or two ago that they try this ‘boundaries’ thing, and it means that if Alaric says he wants to take a long shower without being molested (although really, who would _want_ that?) then for now, at least, that’s what Alaric gets.

There’s someone in the house.

Damon sniffs the air, listens carefully, and then dismisses it. Probably, Elena and Stefan are upstairs playing Pictionary, or Caroline’s raiding the downstairs fridge for blood bags. It’s cute how she thinks he doesn’t know she does it.

Perhaps it’s the blood bag diet, or perhaps Damon’s getting mellow, but  somehow, when three big guys burst into the library a moment later, it’s actually a shock. Not so much of a shock that he doesn’t get time to dodge the arrow aimed at his heart, though it does pierce his shoulder, which is very annoying; this is one of his favourite shirts. It also _hurts_.

In one tenth of a second, he has one of the guys in a headlock, positioned like a shield. Damon feels the capillaries in his face fill with blood, his fangs descend, before he even hears the bottles on the table hit the ground.

Damon has no idea what the guy he’s holding looks like, but he has funny hair and a really nice jacket. The second guy is about eight feet tall with big doe eyes and a crossbow which he can probably handle – or could, if he didn’t have to point it at the struggling bundle in Damon’s arms, which is no doubt someone he values. A quick sniff confirms it; he can smell them all over each other.

Speaking of the struggling – it’s getting annoying. Damon shifts his arms to increase the pressure on the man’s rotator cuff, and after a muffled curse, the struggling stops.

“Another quarter-inch and your shoulder is dislocated,” Damon murmurs into his ear. “So don’t. Move. A muscle.”

“Son of a bitch,” the body mutters.

“Actually, my mother was a very sweet woman. And also, you broke into my house, so fuck you.”

The third guy is older – maybe sixty, greying, thick, gnarled stubble, and a vicious scar across his face. He looks as if he might be blind in one eye.

(Chillingly, he looks like Alaric could in thirty years, and mentally, Damon pushes ‘convince Ric to let me turn him into a vampire’ up a few notches on his to-do list. Because, no thank you.)

Really, it would take Damon a minute or two to drain all three of them dry, but if Alaric catches him, he’ll be pissed. Although, self defence. Maybe not.

“You three are so lucky I’m on good behaviour,” he growls. “Though if I change my mind about that you’ll all be dead so fast you won’t have time to grieve for each other. Who are you and what the fuck are you doing in my house?”

The throat below his teeth is almost buzzing, the pulse is so rapid. Damon debates biting down, just a little, just enough for a taste, so they know the threat is real, when the library door flies open.

Damon actually has to fight a boner, watching Alaric throw himself through the doors, crossbow already in hand, to aim a vicious kick at the hand of the old man. His gun (and really? Gun?) hits the ground, and the stranger barely gets a moment to find his balance again, when he says, in a small voice: “Saltzman?”

For a second, Alaric looks shocked. Then merely surprised.

Then pissed.

And oh, pissed is Alaric’s very best expression. Once they’ve despatched the three Stooges (or, knowing Alaric, politely asked them to leave), Damon is going to do all sorts of wonderful things to Alaric’s naked body.

Right after Alaric explains how he and the three Stooges know each other. Because they clearly do; quite aside from the fact that the old man knows Alaric by name, Damon can see Alaric is looking around the room, assessing; choosing a strategy, and that he looks more betrayed than surprised.

When Alaric’s eyes alight on the crossbow in bigfoot’s hand, he flinches, and Damon can see why. It’s Alaric’s design. You can tell from the launch mechanism.

Damon conceals a grin. Alaric is angrier than he is. One of the main hints to this is the fact that his crossbow is aimed so expertly at the old man’s heart that an erratic heartbeat – from Alaric – or a single false twitch – from the old man – would be fatal.

It’s the bundle of fear and blood in Damon’s arms who breaks the silence. “Just shoot, Sam,” he shouts at the giant, commanding, even though he must be in a lot of pain.

“I wouldn’t, Sam,” Alaric warns. “Put it down. Now.”

Sam. Cute name. All pure and stuff.

Sam’s torn, swivels his eyes towards the old man.

“What the fuck is going on here, Saltzman?” the old man asks. “We heard about this little backwater town that’s been crawling with vamps since the eighteen hundreds, and two of them are living totally unchecked. You know how many people die from ‘animal attacks’ around here?”

“Less than there would be if Damon and I weren’t out killin’ them every second weekend, John.”

Alaric is steady as a rock and it is just about the hottest thing Damon has ever seen. There is something odd between Alaric and the old man, and Damon can’t quite work it out. It’s as if Alaric is expected to defer, but won’t. John. John. Damon tries to remember if Alaric has ever mentioned the name. He’s sure he hasn’t.

Ugh. Damon really wants a drink. Grazes his fangs gently over the throat of the body in his arms, careful not to quite pierce the skin, but he feels the man tense, and chuckles against the skin beneath his lips.

John looks like he could burst a blood vessel in his head. “I _knew_ it was him. Damon? Salvatore? The vampire who killed your _wife_? So, what, you’re buddies now? I thought you came here to kill him.” His expression, some combination of anger and disgust, would be enough to make a lot of people cringe, but Alaric doesn’t move a muscle.

“He didn’t kill her, John. You know that. You knew it before I did.”

Damon speaks up. “I haven’t killed anyone in a _very_ long time. And you should be a _lot_ nicer to me, because I _miss_ it.” He almost spits the words out, a hundred and seventy years of venom in his tone, lip twisting cruelly.

Without turning his head, Alaric answers. “Not helping, Damon.”

“Who are your _friends_ , Ric?” Damon wants an explanation, but he’s prepared to wait for it. He trusts Alaric. He wants these guys to know Alaric trusts him, too.

“John Winchester, and his sons, Sam and Dean.”

 _Brothers?_

Damon sniffs at the air again, and then closer to Dean’s face, inhaling a complex brew of scents; mainly fear, guilt, and lust. The delicious shame of it. He wonders if daddy knows. “Brothers?” he asks. “They don’t smell like -”

“Shut up,” Alaric and Sam say, in perfect unison. Damon grins viciously.

Dean makes a strangled noise, and makes a futile attempt to struggle some more. “Sammy. Just shoot.”

Alaric interrupts. “You shoot Damon and I shoot John, Sam. Not worth it for one vampire and we all know it. And Damon, put your teeth away. You’re scary. They get it.”

For some reason, Damon likes it when Alaric tells him what to do. Sometimes he likes it enough to do what he’s told. He feels the capillaries an his face drain, feels his fangs recede. Shakes his head a little.

“You’d really shoot me, Saltzman? Over a bloodsucker?” John actually looks sad, cocks his head just slightly to the side. “You’d choose a monster over humans? Over _us_?”

Alaric smiles lazily. “Try me.” His crossbow hasn’t shifted an inch.

Sam looks from face to face, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing. Finally coming back to settle on Alaric, oscillating between appalled and incredulous. “You… you’re _with_ him? You’re sleeping with a _vampire_?”

Oh, but it’s rich. Sam fucking his brother – and not occasionally, it’s happened in the last few hours – and he’s on Alaric’s case for sleeping with a vampire. Damon chuckles, and there is very little humour in it. “The pot calling the kettle fucked up, _Sammy_. I like it.” There’s a viciousness in his voice that he can almost taste. “I trust Ric’s aim with that crossbow a lot better than you trust yours. You’re shaking like a leaf and I only have to shift a quarter inch and you shoot your… _brother_ instead.”

There is a pause, and then John switches tack. “Saltz- Alaric,” he says, gentle as he can manage, which to be fair, isn’t very gentle. He sounds pissed off and confused. “Vampires are monsters. You got any idea how many people he’s killed?”

“Doesn’t matter what he’s done, John. Matters what he does now. Seems to me a man like you should understand that.” Alaric is still holding steady and still, and it makes Damon’s heart skip a beat. Alaric is choosing him over a bunch of humans. Humans who, Damon suspects, are, so far as these things go, the good guys; clearly, they’re hunters, and probably friends.

Nothing happens, nothing changes. “You owe me, John.” Alaric flickers his eyes to Sam and Dean as well. “You two do, as well.”

 _Owes_ …?

No one without enhanced vampire senses would be able to read it from this sort of a distance, but Damon can; John’s eyes flicker from the scar above Alaric’s eye, to the bump on his nose, to his bottom lip. Exactly how Alaric got hurt, Damon doesn’t know, but in a rush, he is sure that every one of the scars on Alaric’s face is there because of John Winchester. He feels a growl start low in his throat.

It takes everything Damon has not to just break Dean’s neck and throw himself across the room at John, drink him dry. He’s the reason Alaric arrived in Mystic Falls almost a robot, Damon’s sure of it.

“Do I have to tell Sam to put that crossbow down, again, John, or are you gonna do it?”

John’s shoulders slump, just a fraction, and Alaric’s smile is just as subtle. Apparently, Alaric is winning the battle of wills, here, and Damon wants him to.

Still, if nothing happens in the next second, Damon will leap across the room and tear John Winchester into cat food. Damon feels Dean’s body respond to shifting tension in his arms, and hopes that someone has the sense to _do_ something.

Sam has the deciding vote, which is fortunate for everyone in the room. He throws the crossbow to the ground, a few feet away, and throws his arms up, stepping back. Dean groans in irritation, and Damon grins into his neck for longer than he needs to. Alaric points his own crossbow away from John, who exhales loudly, but flinches when Alaric picks his gun up before John has a chance to. Alaric clears the chamber, pockets the bullets and hands it back, and Damon can’t help but smile at the condescension.

When Damon looks up again, Dean is standing by Sam, rubbing his shoulder and shooting daggers at his captor.

Damon pulls the arrow out of his shoulder with a series of muffled curses. “I really _liked_ this shirt,” he says, grumpy.

“You alright?” Alaric asks him, as Damon throws the arrow into the fireplace.

“Never been a fan of uninvited guests.” He turns and smiles sweetly at the Winchesters. “Which is my way of saying get the fuck out of my house, and never come back.” Damon suspects it’s the most threatening he’s ever looked, especially since he notices that Alaric is stifling a grin.

Sam leads Dean out of the room, but not before pausing in front of Alaric. Damon, of course, hears everything. “You sure you know what you’re doing, man?” he asks. “Because this is…”

Alaric nods. “I know what I’m doing.”

Damon feels himself harden at the conviction on Alaric’s voice.

(Damon’s been in love before. He’s never been loved back. He’s never had this.)

Sam seems to be searching Alaric’s face for the trace of doubt Damon knows isn’t there, hasn’t been there for a while, now. “Good luck, man,” Sam says, and heads to the front door to wait for John. Damon can still hear Dean spluttering complaints and recriminations.

John starts to follow them, when Alaric calls him back. “John?”

John looks almost hopeful, until he sees the gravity in Alaric’s expression. Damon wants to laugh.

“You hear about vampires in Virginia, keep out of it. Assume we’ve got it under control. Because we do.”

John shakes his head. “This is crazy, Saltzman.”

“Actually, leave us North Carolina, too, John. We do like a weekend away,” Damon adds, sounding bored.

John narrows his eyes in reply. “What about West Virginia?” he asks, voice dripping sarcasm.

Damon waves his hand. “You can have it. Mountain men. _Incest_. All very nasty.”

After one last glance at Alaric, John follows his sons out the door. Damon and Alaric watch them drive away, John in the Sierra, Sam and Dean in the Impala.

Damon shuts the door, with a little more gusto than necessary. The metaphor is blinding, and he sees Alaric bite back a laugh.

Damon shakes his arm out. It’s healed, but it’s still sore. “You have weird friends,” he says. “Or, you did. Until just now.”

Alaric has to chuckle. “I guess so.”

“I thought I was going to get fresh blood, for a minute there.” Damon is disappointed, and he’s not a nice enough… person to pretend he’s not, but he stretches the length of his body against Alaric’s, snaking his arms around his waist and shoulder. Alaric rubs a hand down Damon’s back, and their lips meet.

“Will they stay away? Because if they don’t, I plan to be a lot less nice about it, next time.” Damon runs his lips across Alaric’s jaw.

Alaric shakes his head. “I don’t know. I think so.”

Cautious, Damon reaches his hand to Alaric’s face. He traces a finger over the scar above Alaric’s eye, the bridge of his nose, and finally over and below his bottom lip. “I could still catch them, you know,” he whispers, his lips barely an inch from Alaric’s.

“I know you could. But I have a better idea,” Alaric says, grinning slyly.

Damon has him half way up the stairs before he knows what’s happening, and the world is as it should be.

 


End file.
